STUART  S    FIRST    PORTRAIT    OF    WASHINGTON 

[From  the  original,  painted  in  T795  and  now  in  the  possession  of  Charles 
Henry  Hart,  Philadelphia] 


•HISTORY    OF    THE 

UNITED    STATES 


FROM  986  TO   1905 


BY 


] 


THOMAS  WENTWORTH  HIGGINSON 

AUTHOR   OF   'YOUNG    FOLKS'    HISTORY   OF    THE    UNITED   STATES" 

AND 

WILLIAM   MACDONALD 

PROFESSOR  OF  HISTORY  IN   BROWN  UNIVERSITY 


ILLUSTRATED 
WITH    MAPS,  PLANS,  PORTRAITS,  ETC. 


NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 
HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

1  90  5 


^ 


*fl 


Copyright,  1882, 1885,  igos.by  Harper  &  Brothers. 


Ml  rights  reserved. 


NOTE 

THE  original  edition  of  the  History  of  the  United  States 
of  America,  by  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson,  ex- 
tended only  to  the  close  of  President  Jackson's  adminis- 
tration. When  first  issued  it  was  promptly  accorded 
high  rank  in  the  estimation  of  readers  of  history;  and 
the  publishers,  being  impressed  with  the  importance  of 
perpetuating  a  work  of  such  acknowledged  merit,  have 
prepared  this  new  edition,  enlarged  and  revised  to  date. 


250231 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

[.              The  First  Americans .  r 

[I.            When  the  Vikings  Came      ......           .  25 

III.  The  Spanish  Discoverers 50 

IV.  The  Old  English   Seamen 73 

V.  The  French  Voyageurs 104 

VI.  "An  English  Nation" 129 

— *  VII.         The  Hundred  Years'  War 160 

VIII.       The    Second    Generation    of    Englishmen    in 

America 184 

V   IX.           The  British  Yoke 208 

X.  The   Dawning  of  Independence 232 

XI.  Jhe  Declaration 253 

XII.  I^he  Birth  of  a  Nation 270 

XIII.  Our  Country's  Cradle 296 

XIV.  The  Early  American   Presidents 320 

XV.  The  Second  War  for  Independence    ....  343 

XVI.  The  Era  of  Good  Feeling 363 

XVII.  The  Great  Western  March 386 

XVIII.  "Old  Hickory" 4" 

XIX.  Abolition  of  Slavery 434 

XX.  Territorial  Slavery 455 

XXI.  The  Prelude  to  the  Civil  War 483 

XXII.  The  War  for  the  Union S13 

XXIII.  Reconstruction  .           54° 

XXIV.  The   Newest  History 578 

INDEX 61  t 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

stuart's  first  portrait  ok  Washington    ....     Frontispiece 

PLAN    OF    THE    PUEBLO    PINTADO 3 

PLAN    OF    HUNGO    PAVIE 

PLAN    OF    IROQUOIS    HOUSE I2 


PLAN    OF    NECHECOLEE    HOUSE 


12 


FORTIFIED  VILLAGE  OF  MOUND-BUILDERS,  GROUND-PLAN     .       .  14 

morgan's   "HIGH   BANK   pueblo" l6 

DIEGO    DE    LANDA'S    MAYA    ALPHABET l8 

NORTH    ATLANTIC,    BY    THE    ICELANDER    SIGURD    STEPHANIUS, 

IN     1570 4? 

DA  VINCI'S  MAPPEMONDE 64 

A  CHART  OF  THE  SIXTEENTH  CENTURY 65 

MAP  OF  SEBASTIAN  CABOT 77 

PART  OF  MAP  OF  DRAKE'S  VOYAGE,  PUBLISHED  BY  J.  HONDIUS 

IN  HOLLAND  TOWARDS  THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  SIXTEENTH 

CENTURY 93 

MAP    OF    NEW    ENGLAND    COAST J3 

MAP    OF    JAMESTOWN    SETTLEMENT r4x 

LA    SALLE   CHRISTENING  THE   COUNTRY    "LOUISIANA"        Facing  p.  174 

FIRST     VIRGINIA     ASSEMBLY,     GOVERNOR      YEARDLEY 

228 
PRESIDING , 

"  2^6 

LEXINGTON    GREEN ° 

286 
PATRICK    HENRY 

IN      THE      AMERICAN      TRENCHES,      BATTLE      OF      NEW 

"  -?6o 

ORLEANS        ° 

11  460 

DANIEL    WEBSTER 

vii 


I  L  L  U  S  T  R  A  T  I  O  N  S 


CHARGE    OF    THE    "PALMETTOS        AT    CHURUBUSCO 

ABRAHAM    LINCOLN  

SERGEANT  HART  NAILING  THE  COLORS  TO  FLAG-STAFF, 

FORT    SUMTER  

GENERAL    ULYSSES    S.    GRANT 

ADMIRAL    FARRAGUT      

GENERAL    ROBERT     E.     LEE       .• 

THE    BATTLE    OF    MANILA    BAY 

THE   CAPTURE   OF  THE   BLOCK-HOUSE   AT   SAN  JUAN 
PANAMA    CANAL    AT    BAS    OBISPO SHOWING    LINE    OF 

CANAL     PARTIALLY     EXCAVATED 


Facing  p.  47  2 
500 


5M 

520 

530 
536 
600 
602 


608 


MAPS 


NORTH     AMERICA,      1750,     SHOWING     CLAIMS     ARISING 

OUT    OF    EXPLORATION    (Color) Facing  p.    180 

THE    UNITED   STATES,   1783,  SHOWING   CLAIMS    OF    THE 

states  (Color) 280 

SLAVERY    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES,    1775-1865    (Color)  438 
TERRITORIAL    ACQUISITIONS    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES, 

1 783-1853  (Color) 480 

THE    UNITED    STATES,     1902     (Color) 594 

PHILIPPINE    ISLANDS,     1902 604 

WEST    INDIES,     1902 606 


HISTORY   OF 
THE   UNITED   STATES 

i 

THE    FIRST   AMERICANS 

IT  happened  to  the  writer  more  than  once,  during 
the  American  Civil  War,  to  sail  up  some  great 
Southern  river  that  was  to  all  appearance  unvisited 
by  the  ships  of  man.  It  might  well  have  been  the 
entrance  to  a  newly  discovered  continent.  No 
light-house  threw  its  hospitable  gleam  across  the 
dangerous  bar,  no  floating  buoys  marked  the  in- 
tricacies of  the  channel;  the  lights  had  been  ex- 
tinguished, the  buoys  removed,  and  the  whole  coast 
seemed  to  have  gone  back  hundreds  of  years,  revert- 
ing to  its  primeval  and  unexplored  condition.  There 
was  commonly  no  sound  except  the  light  plash 
of  waves  or  the  ominous  roll  of  heavy  surf.  Once 
only,  I  remember,  when  at  anchor  in  a  dense  fog  off 
St.  Simon's  Island,  in  Georgia,  I  heard  a  low,  con- 
tinuous noise  from  the  unseen  distance,  more  wild 
and  desolate  than  anything  else  in  my  memory  can 
parallel.  It  came  from  within  the  vast  girdle  of 
mist,  and  seemed  as  if  it  might  be  the  cry  of  lost 
souls  out  of  some  Inferno  of  Dante;  yet  it  was  but 
the  sound  of  innumerable  sea-fowl  at  the  entrance 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

of  the  outer  bay.  Amid  such  experiences  I  was  for 
the  first  time  enabled  to  picture  to  myself  the  Amer- 
ican continent  as  its  first  European  visitors  saw  it. 

Lonely  as  the  land  may  have  seemed,  those  early 
voyagers  always  came  upon  the  traces,  ere  long,  of 
human  occupants.  Who  were  those  men  and  women, 
what  was  their  origin,  what  their  mode  of  life? 
Every  one  who  explores  the  mounds  of  the  Ohio 
Valley,  or  gazes  on  the  ruins  of  Yucatan,  or  looks  into 
the  wondrous  narratives  of  the  Spanish  conquerors, 
must  ask  himself  this  question.  For  many  years 
there  seemed  no  answer  to  it.  Facts  came  in  faster 
and  faster,  and  every  new  fact  made  the  puzzle  seem 
more  hopeless,  so  long  as  no  one  could  offer  the 
solution.  These  various  prehistoric  races,  so  widely 
sundered,  threwT  no  light  upon  one  another ;  they  only 
deepened  one  another's  darkness.  Indians,  Aztecs, 
Mayas,  Mound-builders,  seemed  to  have  no  common 
origin,  no  visible  analogy  of  life  or  habits.  The 
most  skilful  student  was  hardly  in  advance  of  the 
least  skilful  as  to  any  real  comprehension  of  the 
facts;  nor  could  this  possibly  be  otherwise,  so  long 
as  the  clew  to  the  labyrinth  was  not  found.  It  is 
only  some  fifty  years  since  it  may  be  said  to  have 
been  discovered;  only  some  thirty  since  it  has  been 
resolutely  and  persistently  used.  Let  us  see  what 
results  it  has  yielded. 

When,  in  1852,  Lieutenant  J.  H.  Simpson,  of  the 
United  States  army,  gave  to  the  world  the  first  de- 
tailed description  of  the  vast  ruined  pueblos  of  New 
Mexico,  and  of  the  other  pueblos  still  occupied,  he 
did  not  know  that  he  was  providing  the  means  for 
rewriting  all  the  picturesque  tales  of  the  early  con- 
querors.    All  their  legends  of  cisatlantic  emperors 


THE    FIRST    AMERICANS 

and  empires  were  to  be  read  anew  in  the  light  of  that 
discovery.  These  romances  had  been  told  in  good 
faith,  or  something  as  near  it  as  the  narrator  knew, 


♦00  YARDS  TO  THE 
BCD  OF  THE  CHACO 


tts 


DD 
D 


Q 


Pueblo  Pintado, 

Chaco  Canon, 
N.M. 

10  -aO  tO  40  80  SO  70  tO  98  too 
_        8CALE  OF  100  FEET 

HBP 

*»//,  **^**^  OUTER  WALLS 

*'""<(  ^OvMUOH  BROKEN  DOWN 

INSIDE  OF  THIS  COURT  FULL  OF  \     \r-\\ 

DEPRESSIONS,  AS  IF  A  NUMBER  OF  \     \\    >l 

UNDER-GROUND  ROOMS  ONCE  EXISTED  \     \  \    \\ 

i!  j'i 


PLAN    OF    THE    PUEBLO    PINTADO 


and  the  tales  had  passed  from  one  to  another,  each 
building  on  what  his  predecessor  had  laid  down. 
The  accounts  were  accepted  with  little  critical  re- 
vision by  modern  writers;  they  filled  the  attractive 

3 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

pages  of  Prescott;  even  Hubert  Bancroft  did  not 
greatly  modify  them;  but  the  unshrinking  light  of  a 
new  theory  was  to  raise  questions  as  to  them  all. 
And  with  them  were  to  be  linked  also  Stephens's 
dreams  of  vast  cities,  once  occupied  by  an  immense 
population,  and  now  remaining  only  as  unexplored 
ruins  amid  the  forests  of  Central  America.  The 
facts  he  saw  were  confirmed,  but  his  impressions  had 
to  be  tested  by  a  wholly  new  interpretation.  And, 
after  all,  these  various  wonders  were  only  to  be  ex- 
changed for  new  marvels,  as  interesting  as  the  old 
ones,  and  more  intelligible  and  coherent. 

From  the  publication  of  Lewis  H.  Morgan's  re- 
markable essay,  entitled  "Montezuma's  Dinner," 
in  the  North  American  Review  for  April,  1876,  the 
new  interpretation  took  a  definite  form.  The  vast 
accumulation  of  facts  in  regard  to  the  early  Ameri- 
can races  then  began  to  be  classified  and  simplified; 
and  with  whatever  difference  as  to  details,  the  gen- 
eral opinion  of  scholars  now  inclines  to  the  view 
which,  when  Morgan  first  urged  it,  was  called  star- 
tling and  incredible.  That  view  is  still,  in  a  sense,  a 
theory,  as  Darwin's  "origin  of  species"  is  still  a 
theory;  but  Morgan's  speculations,  like  Darwin's,  be- 
gan a  new  era  for  the  science  to  which  they  relate. 
He  held  that  there  never  was  a  prehistoric  American 
civilization,  properly  so  called,  but  only  an  advanced 
and  wonderfully  skilful  barbarism,  or  semi-civiliza- 
tion at  the  utmost.  He  maintained  that  the  aborigi- 
nal races,  except  perhaps  the  Eskimo,  were  essential- 
ly one  in  their  social  structure,  however  they  may 
have  varied  in  development.  In  his  view  there 
never  was  an  Aztec  or  Maya  empire,  but  only  a 
league  of  free  tribes,  appointing  their  own  chiefs,  and 

4 


THE    FIRST    AMERICANS 

accepting  the  same  general  modes  of  organization, 
based  on  consanguinity,  that  have  prevailed  among 
all  the  more  advanced  families  of  North  American 
Indians.  Montezuma  was  not  an  emperor,  and  had 
no  palace,  but  he  lived  in  the  great  communal  dwell- 
ing of  his  tribe,  where  he  was  recognized  and  served 
as  head.  The  forests  of  Yucatan  held  no  vast  cities 
— cities  whose  palaces  remain,  while  the  humble 
dwellings  of  the  poor  have  perished — but  only  pueblo 
towns,  in  whose  great  communal  structures  the  rich 
and  the  poor  alike  dwelt.  There  were  questions  enough 
left  unsolved  in  American  archaeology,  no  doubt,  but 
the  solution  of  this  part  of  the  problem  was  now  pro- 
posed in  intelligible  terms,  at  least ;  and  it  was  rapid- 
ly followed  up  by  the  accurate  researches  of  Morgan 
and  Putnam  and  Bandelier,  and  by  the  systematic 
investigations  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology  at  Wash- 
ington. 
-f-  I  have  said  that  all  this  new  view  of  the  problem 
dates  from  our  knowledge  of  the  Pueblo  or  Village 
Indians  of  New  Mexico.  What  is  a  pueblo  ?  It  is  an 
Indian  town,  of  organization  and  aspect  so  peculiar 
that  it  can  best  be  explained  by  minute  descriptions. 
Let  us  begin  with  the  older  examples,  now  in  ruins. 
Mr.  Bandelier  examined  for  the  American  Archaeolog- 
ical Institute  a  ruined  building  at  Pecos,  in  New 
Mexico,  which  he  claimed  to  be  the  largest  aboriginal 
structure  of  stone  within  the  limits  of  the  United 
States.  It  has  a  circuit  of  1480  feet,  is  five  stories 
high,  and  once  included  by  calculation  500  separate 
rooms.  This  is  simply  a  ruined  pueblo.  The  com- 
posite dwelling  once  sheltered  the  inhabitants  of  a 
whole  Indian  town.  Pueblo  Bonito,  on  the  Rio 
Chacos,  described  by  Lieutenant  Simpson,  and  later 

5 


HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

by  Dr.  W.  H.  Jackson,  is  1716  feet  in  circuit;  it  in- 
cluded 641  rooms,  and  could  have  housed,  it  is  esti- 
mated, 3000  Indians.  A  stone  pueblo  on  the  Animas 
River,  visited  and  described  by  Lewis  H.  Morgan, 
had  more  than  400  rooms— and  such  instances  could 
easily  be  multipled.  As  a  rule,  each  of  these  build- 
ings constituted  a  village — a  single  vast  house  built 
on  three  sides  of  a  court.  The  stories  rose  in  suc- 
cessive terraces,  each  narrower  than  the  one  beneath, 
and  each  approachable  only  by  ladders,  there  being 
no  sign  of  any  internal  means  of  ascent  from  story  to 
story.     The  outer  walls  were  built  usually  of  thin 


300  Ft. 

PLAN   OF  HUNGO    PA  VIE 


slabs  of  gray  sandstone,  laid  with  the  greatest  pre- 
cision and  accuracy,  often  with  no  signs  of  rnortar, 
the  interstices  being  filled  with  stones  of  the  minutest 
thinness,  so  that  the  whole  ruin  appears  in  the  dis- 
tance, according  to  Simpson,  "like  a  magnificent 
piece  of  mosaic-work."  These  pueblos  were  practi- 
cally impregnable  to  all  uncivilized  warfare,  and  they 
differ  only  in  material,  not  in  the  essentials  of  their 
structure,  from  the  adobe  pueblos  occupied  by  the 
Village  Indians  of  to-day. 

6 


THE    FIRST    AMERICANS 

The  first  impression  made  by  the  adobe  pueblos 
now  inhabited  is  quite  different  from  that  produced 
by  these  great  stone  structures,  yet  the  internal  ar- 
rangement is   almost  precisely  the   same.     As  you 
cross,  for  instance,  the  green  meadows  of  the  Rio 
Grande,  you  may  see  rising  abruptly  before  you,  like 
a  colossal  ant-hill,  a  great  drab  mound  with  broken 
lines  that  suggest  roofs  at  the  top.     As  you  draw 
nearer,  you  see  before  you  solid  walls  or  banks  of 
the  same  drab  hue,  perforated  here  and  there  by 
small  openings.     These  walls  are  in  tiers— tiers  of 
terraces— each  spreading  out  flat  at  the  top,  and  a 
few  feet  wide,  with  a  higher  one  behind  it  and  an- 
other behind  that,  until  in  some  cases  they  are  five 
stories  high.     Strips  of  what  seems  lattice-work  stand 
on  these  terraces,  slanted,  tilted,  propped  irregularly 
here  and  there;  they  also  are  of  a  drab  color,  "as  if 
walls,  roofs,  ladders,  all  had  been  run,  wet  mud,  into 
a  fretted  mould,  baked,  and  turned  out  like  some 
freaky  confectioner's  device  made  of  opaque,  light- 
brown  cough  candy."     At  intervals  upon  these  ter- 
races, or  on  the  ground  near  the  base  of  the  walls, 
there  stand  low  oval  mounds  of  the  same  baked  drab 
mud,  shaped  like  the  half  of  an  egg-shell,  with  an 
aperture  left  in  the  small  end.     Then  on  the   roof, 
lifted  a  few  feet  above  them,  there  are  little  thatches 
of  brush,  ragged  and  unfinished,  like  the  first  rough 
platform  of  twigs  and  mud  which  the  robin  constructs 
for  her  nest.     Closer  inspection  shows  that  the  tiers 
and  terraces  are  the  stories  and  roofs  of  the  houses; 
the  holes  are  doors  and  windows  opening  into  rooms 
under  the  terraced  roofs;  the  strips  of  lattice-work 
are  ladders,  these  being  the  only  means  of  going  from 
one  terrace  to  another;  the  little  oval  mounds  are 

7 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

ovens ;  and  the  bits  of  thatch  are  arbors  on  the  roofs. 
In  the  pueblo  of  San  Juan — as  portrayed  by  Mrs. 
Helen  Jackson,  of  whose  graphic  description  the  above 
is  but  an  abstract — there  are  four  or  five  of  these 
large  terraced  buildings,  with  a  small  open  plaza  or 
court  between.  When  Mrs.  Jackson  visited  the  scene, 
upon  a  festal  day,  this  plaza  was  filled  with  Indians 
and  Mexicans,  and  the  terraces  were  all  covered  with 
them,  dressed  for  the  most  part  in  blankets  of  the 
gayest  colors,  relieved  against  the  drab  adobe  walls 
or  against  a  brilliant  blue  sky.  This  group  of  strange 
structures,  thus  tenanted  and  thus  adorned,  is  an  in- 
habited pueblo. 

Sometimes,  as  at  Taos,  the  separate  dwellings  or 
cells  of  the  building  are  so  crowded  together  as  to 
resemble,  in  the  words  of  Bandelier,  "an  extraor- 
dinarily large  honey-comb."  The  same  is  the  case 
with  that  of  Zuni,  both  these  pueblos  being  now  in- 
habited, and  the  latter,  which  is  the  larger,  giving 
shelter  to  several  hundred  Indians.  Others  again, 
like  that  of  Acoma,  are  so  protected  by  their  situa- 
tion that  this  close  aggregation  of  cells  is  not  neces- 
sary; and  the  little  tenements  are  simply  placed  side 
by  side  like  houses  in  a  block,  the  whole  being  perch- 
ed on  a  cliff  three  hundred  and  fifty  feet  high,  acces- 
sible only  by  a  single  row  of  steps  cut  in  the  rock. 
Sometimes  the  whole  structure  is  in  a  cleft  of  a  rock, 
yet  even  there  it  is  essentially  a  pueblo,  with  the  same 
terraces  and  the  same  ladders,  so  far  as  there  is  room. 
Sometimes  we  find  the  main  pueblo,  ruined  or  in- 
habited, beneath  the  cliff,  and  the  citadel  of  refuge 
in  a  position  almost  inaccessible  among  the  rocks 
above.  Some  of  these  masses  of  building  are  now 
occupied,  more  are  in  ruins.     Each  shelters,  or  may 

8 


THE    FIRST    AMERICANS 

have  sheltered,  hundreds  of  inhabitants,  and  the  ex- 
isting Village  Indians  probably  represent  for  us  not 
merely  the  race,  but  the  mode  of  living,  of  those  who 
built  every  one  of  these  great  structures.  If  we  wish 
to  know  what  was  the  America  which  Cortez  invaded, 
we  must  look  for  it  in  the  light  of  these  investiga- 
tions. 

No  trace  now  remains  of  the  so-called  city  of  Mexico 
as  Cortez  saw  it ;  but  we  know,  in  a  vague  way,  how 
it  compared  with  the  pueblos  that  still  exist.  The 
clew  to  a  comparison  is  as  follows:  There  prevailed 
in  the  sixteenth  century  a  legend  that  seven  bishops 
had  once  sailed  west  from  Portugal,  and  founded 
seven  cities  in  America.  Cabeca  de  Vaca,  after  his 
wanderings  in  the  interior  of  America  in  1536,  brought 
back  an  account  of  large  and  semi -civilized  communi- 
ties dwelling  in  palaces ;  and  it  was  thought  that  these 
might  be  identified  with  the  cities  founded  by  the 
bishops.  They  were  seen  again  by  Friar  Marcos,  of 
Nizza,  or  Nice,  in  1539,  and  by  Coronadoin  1540,  and 
were  by  them  mentioned  as ' '  the  seven  cities  of  Cibola. 
Coronado  fully  describes  the  "great  houses  of  stone," 
"with  ladders  instead  of  stairs,"  thus  identifying 
them  unmistakably  with  the  still  existing  pueblos. 
Whether  they  were  the  seven  pueblos  of  the  Zunis, 
or  those  of  the  Moquis  in  Arizona,  is  as  yet  unsettled; 
but  it  is  pretty  certain  that  they  were  identical  with 
the  one  or  the  other;  and  as  Friar  Marcos  declared 
them  to  be  in  his  day  "more  considerable  than 
Mexico,"  we  have  something  like  a  standard  of  com- 
parison. Such  great  communal  houses,  which  could 
shelter  a  whole  Spanish  army  within  their  walls, 
could  seem  nothing  else  than  palaces  to  those  wholly 
unused  to  the  social  organization  which  they  repre- 

9 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

sented.  The  explorers  reasoned,  just  as  students 
reasoned  for  more  than  three  centuries  longer,  that 
structures  so  vast  could  only  have  been  erected  by 
despotism.  They  saw  an  empire  where  there  was  no 
empire ;  they  supposed  themselves  in  the  presence  of 
a  society  like  their  own;  all  their  descriptions  were 
cast  in  the  mould  of  this  society,  and  the  mould  re- 
mained unbroken  until  the  civilized  world  rediscov- 
ered the  pueblos. 

Again,  so  long  as  the  Pueblo  Indians  were  unknown 
to  us,  there  appeared  an  impassable  gap  between  the 
roving  Indians  of  the  North  and  the  more  advanced 
race  that  Cortez  conquered.  Yet  writers  had  long 
since  pointed  out  the  seeming  extravagance  of  the 
Spanish  descriptions,  the  exaggeration  of  their  sta- 
tistics. In  the  celebrated  Spanish  narrative  of 
Montezuma's  banquet,  Bernal  Diaz,  writing  thirty 
years  after  the  event,  describes  four  women  as  bring- 
ing water  to  their  chief— an  occurrence  not  at  all  im- 
probable. In  the  account  by  Herrera,  written  still 
later,  the  four  have  increased  to  twenty.  According 
to  Diaz,  Montezuma  had  200  of  his  nobility  on  guard 
in  the  palace;  Cortez  expands  this  to  600,  and  Her- 
rera to  3000.  Zuazo,  describing  the  pueblo  or  town 
of  Mexico  in  152 1,  attributed  to  it  60,000  inhabitants, 
and  the  "anonymous  conqueror"  who  was  with  Cor- 
tez wrote  the  same.  This  estimate  Morgan  believes 
to  have  been  twice  too  large ;  but  Gomara  and  Peter 
Martyr  transformed  the  inhabitants  into  houses— 
the  estimate  which  Prescott  followed— while  Torque  - 
mada,  cited  by  Clavigero,  goes  still  further,  and 
writes  120,000  houses.  Supposing  that,  as  seems 
probable,  the  Mexican  houses  were  of  the  communal 
type,   holding  fifty  or  a  hundred  persons  each,  we 

10 


THE    FIRST    AMERICANS 

have  an  original  population  of  perhaps  30,000  swol- 
len to  6,000,000.  These  facts  illustrate  the  extrava- 
gances of  statement  to  which  the  study  of  the  New 
Mexican  pueblos  has  largely  put  an  end.  This  study 
has  led  us  to  abate  much  of  the  exaggeration  with 
which  the  ancient  Mexican  society  has  been  treated, 
and  on  the  other  hand  to  do  justice  to  the  more  ad- 
vanced among  the  tribes  of  northern  Indians.  The 
consequence  is  that  the  two  types  appear  less  unlike 
each  other  than  was  formerly  supposed. 

Let  us  compare  the  habits  of  the  Pueblo  Indians 
with  those  of  more  northern  tribes.  Lewis  and  Clark 
thus  describe  a  village  of  the  Chopunish,  or  Nez 
Perces,  on  the  Columbia  River: 

"The  village  of  Tunnachemootoolt  is  in  fact  only 
a  single  house  150  feet  long,  built  after  the  Chopunish 
fashion  with  sticks,  straw,  and  dried  grass.  It  con- 
tains twenty-four  fires,  about  double  that  number 
of  families,  and  might  perhaps  muster  100  fighting- 
men." 

This  represents  a  communal  household  of  nearly 
five  hundred  people,  and  another  great  house  of  the 
same  race  (Nechecolees)  was  still  larger,  being  226 
feet  in  length.  The  houses  of  the  Iroquois  were  100 
feet  long.  The  Creeks,  the  Mandans,  the  Sacs,  the 
Mohaves,  and  other  tribes  lived  in  a  similar  com- 
munal way,  several  related  families  in  each  house, 
living  and  eating  in  common.  All  these  built  their 
houses  of  perishable  materials;  some  arranged  them 
for  defence,  others  did  not,  but  all  the  structures 
bear  a  certain  analogy  to  each  other,  and  even,  when 
carefully  considered,  to  the  pueblos  of  New  Mexico. 

Compare,  for  instance,  a  ground-plan  of  one  of  the 
Chopunish  houses  among  the  Nechecolees  with  that 

11 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

of  an  Iroquois  house  and  with  a  New  Mexican  pueblo, 
and  one  is  struck  with  the  resemblance.  All  these 
houses  seem  obviously  adapted  to  a  communal  life, 
and  traces  of  this  practice,  varying  in  different  places, 


1. 1 

n 

1 

1 

1  1  1  1  1 

i  I  i  i  i 

1    1 

i  i 

1    1    1 

i  i  i 

86  Ft. 

PLAN    OF    IROQUOIS 

HOUSE 

o 

II 
II 

II       II        II 
II       II        II 

II 

II 

ii 
ii 

220  Ft. 
PLAN    OF    NECHECOLEE    HOUSE 


come  constantly  before  us.  The  Pueblo  Indians,  like 
other  tribes,  hold  their  lands  in  common.  The  trav- 
eller Stephens  saw  near  the  ruins  of  Uxmal  the  food 
of  a  hundred  laboring-men  prepared  at  one  hut,  and 
each  family  sending  for  its  own  portion — ' '  a  pro- 
cession of  women  and  children,  each  carrying  a 
smoking  bowl  of  hot  broth,  all  coming  down  the  same 
path,  and  dispersing  among  the  huts."  But  this 
description  might  easily  be  paralleled  among  north- 
ern tribes.  I  will  not  dwell  on  the  complex  laws  of 
descent  and  relationship,  which  are  so  elaborately 
described  by  Morgan  in  his  Ancient  Society,  and 
which  appear  to  have  prevailed  in  general  among  all 
the  aboriginal  clans.  The  essential  result  of  all  these 
various  observations  is  this,  that  whatever  degree  of 
barbarism  or  semi-civilization  was  attained  by  any 
of  the  early  American  races,  it  was  everywhere  based 
on  similar  ways  of  living;  it  never  resembled  feudal- 


THE    FIRST    AMERICANS 

ism,  but  came  much  nearer  to  communism;  it  was 
the  condition  of  a  people  substantially  free,  whose 
labor  was  voluntary,  and  whose  chiefs  were  of  their 
own  choosing.  After  a  most  laborious  investigation, 
Bandelier — in  the  Twelfth  Report  of  the  Peabody  In- 
stitute— came  to  the  conclusion  that  "the  social  or- 
ganization and  mode  of  government  of  the  ancient 
Mexicans  was  a  military  democracy,  originally  based 
upon  communism  in  living."  And  if  this  was  ap- 
parently true  even  in  the  seemingly  powerful  and 
highly  organized  races  of  Mexico,  it  was  certainly 
true  of  every  North  American  tribe. 

If  we  accept  this  conclusion — and  most  archaeolo- 
gists now  accept  it — much  of  what  has  been  written 
about  prehistoric  American  civilization  proves  to  have 
been  too  hastily  said.  Tylor,  for  instance,  after  visit- 
ing the  pyramid  of  Cholula,  laid  it  down  as  an  axiom : 
"Such  buildings  as  these  can  only  be  raised  under 
peculiar  social  conditions.  The  ruler  must  be  a  des- 
potic sovereign,  and  the  mass  of  the  people  slaves, 
whose  subsistence  and  whose  lives  are  sacrificed  with- 
out scruple  to  execute  the  fancies  of  the  monarch, 
who  is  not  so  much  the  governor  as  the  unrestricted 
owner  of  the  country  and  the  people."  He  did  not 
sufficiently  consider  that  this  is  the  first  and  easiest 
way  to  explain  all  great  structures  representing  vast 
labor.  A  much-quoted  American  writer  finds  it  neces- 
sary to  explain  even  the  works  of  the  Mound-builders 
in  a  similar  way.  J.  W.  Foster  thinks  it  clear  that 
"the  condition  of  society  among  the  Mound-builders 
was  not  that  of  freemen,  or,  in  other  words,  that  the 
state  possessed  absolute  power  over  the  lives  and 
fortunes  of  its  subjects."  But  the  theory  of  despot- 
ism is  no  more  needed  to  explain  a  mound  or  a  pueblo 

13 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

than  to  justify  the  existence  of  the  long  houses  of 
the  Iroquois.  Even  the  less  civilized  types  of  the 
aboriginal  American  race  had  learned  how  to  unite 
in  erecting  their  communal  dwellings ;  and  surely  the 
higher  the  grade  the  greater  the  power. 

The  Mound-builders  were  formerly  regarded  as  a 


FORTIFIED    VILLAGE    OF   MOUND-BUILDERS,    GROUND-PLAN 
14 


THE    FIRST    AMERICANS 

race  so  remote  from  the  present  Indian  tribes  that 
there  could  be  nothing  in  common  between  them,  yet 
all  recent  inquiries  tend  to  diminish  this  distance. 
Many  Indian  tribes  have   built   burial   mounds  for 
their  dead.     Squier,  after  the  publication  of  his  great 
work  on  the  mounds  of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  made 
an  exploration  of  the  mounds  of  western  New  York, 
and  found,  contrary  to  all  his  preconceived  opinions, 
that  these  last  must  have  been  made  by  the  Iroquois. 
Some  of  the  most  elaborate  series  of  works,  as  those 
at  Marietta  and  Circleville,  Ohio,  have  yielded  from 
their  deepest  recesses  articles  of  European  manufact- 
ure, showing  an  origin   not  further  back  than  the 
historic  period.     Spanish  swords  and  blue  glass  beads 
have  been  found  in  the  mounds  of  Georgia  and  Flor- 
ida.    But  we  need  not  go  so  far  as  this  to  observe 
the  analogies  of  structure.    If  we  compare  Professor 
F.  W.  Putnam's  ground-plan  of  a  fortified  village  of 
the  Mound-builders  on  Spring  Creek,  in  Tennessee, 
with   a   similar   plan  of   a  Mandan  village  as  given 
by  Prince  Maximilian  of  Neuwied  in   1843,  we  find 
their  arrangement  to  be  essentially  the  same.     Each 
is    on   a   promontory   protected   by  the  bend  of  a 
stream;  each  is  surrounded  by  an  embankment  which 
was  once,  in  all  probability,  surmounted  by  a  pali- 
sade.    Within  this  embankment  were  the  houses,  dis- 
tributed more  irregularly  in   Putnam's  plan,   more 
formally  and  conventionally  in  that  of  the  Prince  of 
Neuwied;  in  other  respects  the  two  villages  are  al- 
most duplicates.     It  is  clear  that  the  Mound-builders 
had  much  in  common  with  those  well-known  tribes 
of  Indians  the  Mandans  and  Onondagas,  in  their  way 
of  placing  and  protecting  their  houses;'  and  another 
comparison  has  been  made  which  links  their  works 

15 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

on  the  other  side  with  the  New  Mexican  pueblos. 
Morgan  prepared  a  conjectural  restoration  of  the 
High  Bank  mounds  in  Ross  County,  Ohio,  on  the 


morgan's  "high  bank  pueblo" 


theory  that  in  that  instance  the  houses  of  the  in- 
habitants were  long  houses  in  structure,  and  were 
built  for  defensive  purposes  on  top  of  the  embank- 
ment. This  makes  the  villages  into  pueblos,  and 
Morgan  therefore  baptized  the  settlement  anew  with 
the  name  of  "High  Bank  Pueblo. "  A  mere  glance 
at  his  restoration  will  show  how  much  there  was  in 
common  between  the  various  types  of  what  he  calls 
the  aboriginal  American  race. 

It  remains  to  be  considered  whether  the  very  high- 
est forms  of  this  race — the  Aztecs  and  the  Mayas — 
are  properly  to  be  called  civilized.  It  is  a  matter 
of  definition;  it  depends  upon  what  we  regard  as 
constituting  civilization.  Here  was  a  people  whose 
development  showed  strange  contradictions.  The 
ancient  Mexicans  were  skilled  in  horticulture,   yet 

16 


THE    FIRST    AMERICANS 

had  no  beasts  of  burden  and  no  milk,  although  the 
ox  and  buffalo  were  within  easy  reach.  They  were 
a  trading  people  and  used  money,  but  had  apparently 
no  system  of  weighing.  They  used  stone  tools  so 
sharp  that  Cortez  found  barbers  shaving  with  razors 
of  obsidian  in  the  public  squares;  they  worked  in 
gold  and  copper,  yet  they  had  not  learned  to  make 
iron  tools  from  the  masses  of  that  metal  which  lay, 
almost  pure,  in  the  form  of  aerolites,  in  their  midst. 
They  could  observe  eclipses  and  make  a  calendar,  yet 
it  is  still  doubtful  whether  they  had  what  is  proper- 
ly to  be  called  an  alphabet.  It  is  certain  that  they 
had  a  method  of  picture-writing,  not  apparently  re- 
moved in  kind  from  the  sort  of  pictorial  mnemonics 
practised  by  many  tribes  of  Indians  at  the  present 
day ;  and  all  definite  efforts  to  extract  more  than  this 
from  it  have  thus  far  failed.  Brasseur  de  Bourbourg 
believed  that  he  had  found  in  1863,  in  the  library  of 
the  Royal  Academy  of  History  at  Madrid,  a  manu- 
script key  to  the  phonetic  alphabet  of  the  Mayas.  It 
was  attached  to  an  unpublished  description  of  Yu- 
catan (Relation  de  las  Cosas  de  Yucatan),  written 
by  Diego  de  Landa,  one  of  the  early  Spanish  bishops 
of  that  country.  Amid  the  general  attention  of 
" Americanists,"  Brasseur  de  Bourbourg  tried  his 
skill  upon  one  of  the  few  Maya  manuscripts,  but  with 
little  success ;  and  Dr.  Valentini,  with  labored  analy- 
sis, later  gave  reasons  for  thinking  the  whole  so-called 
alphabet  a  Spanish  fabrication.  The  very  question 
of  the  alphabet  remains,  therefore,  still  unproved, 
while  Tylor,  one  of  the  highest  authorities  on  an- 
thropology, considers  it  essential  to  the  claim  of  civ- 
ilization that  a  nation  should  have  a  written  lan- 
guage.   Tried  by  this  highest  standard,  therefore,  we 

17 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

cannot  quite  say  that  either  the  Aztecs  or  the  Mayas 
were  civilized. 

To  sum  up  the  modern  theory,  a  key  to  the  whole 
aboriginal  American  society  is  given  in  the  pueblos 
of  New  Mexico,  representing  the  communal  house- 
hold. This  household  is  still  to  be  seen  at  its  lowest 
point  in  the  lodges  of  the  roving  Indians  of  the  North, 
and  it  produced,  when  carried  to  its  highest  point, 


Signs.      Phonetlo 

value. 


4. 


7. 


Signs-      "Fhonp.tla 
▼alue. 

10.  @     i 


pTgna.     Zhonetta 


11. 

12. 

13. 

14. 
15. 

16. 

IT. 

18. 


ca 


(§) 


yj 


U    m 


<2>  o. 

LJ       0. 


19. 
20. 

21. 


>»(UJ  P 

PP 


00 


cu 


22.    ©0    ka 


23. 


*# 


24.  g& 


25. 

27. 


I 

? 


DIEGO    DE    LANDA  S    MAYA    ALPHABET 
l8 


"THE    FIRST    AMERICANS 

all  the  art  and  architecture  of  Uxmal,  and  all  the 
so-called  civilization  which  the  Spanish  conquerors 
admired,  exaggerated,  and  overthrew.  The  myste- 
rious mounds  of  the  Ohio  Valley  were  for  the  most 
part  erected  only  that  they  might  give  to  their  build- 
ers the  advantages  possessed  without  labor  by  those 
who  dwelt  upon  the  high  table-lands  of  New  Mexico. 
The  great  ruined  edifices  in  the  valley  of  the  Chacos 
are  the  same  in  kind  with  the  ruined  " palaces"  of 
Yucatan.  All  these — lodges,  palaces,  and  pueblos 
alike — are  but  the  communal  dwellings  of  one  great 
aboriginal  race,  of  uncertain  origin  and  history,  vary- 
ing greatly  in  grade  of  development,  but  one  in  in- 
stitutions, in  society,  and  in  blood.  This  is  the  mod- 
ern theory,  a  theory  which  has  given  a  new  impulse 
to  all  investigation  and  all  thought  upon  this  sub- 
ject. 

What  is  now  its  strength,  and  what  its  weakness? 
Its  strength  is  that  of  a  strong,  simple,  intelligible 
working  hypothesis — not  merely  the  best  that  has 
been  offered,  but  the  first.  What  is  its  weakness? 
This  only,  that,  like  many  a  promising  theory  in  the 
natural  sciences,  it  still  leaves  some  facts  to  be  fully 
accounted  for. 

Morgan,  with  all  his  great  merits,  had  not  always 
the  moderation  which  gives  such  peculiar  value  to 
the  works  of  Darwin;  he  was  not  always  willing  to 
distinguish  between  what  was  firm  ground  and  what 
was  insecure.  In  order  to  make  his  theory  appear 
consistent,  he  had  to  ignore  many  difficulties  and  set- 
tle many  points  in  an  off-hand  manner,  and  there 
is  something  almost  exasperating  in  the  positiveness 
with  which  he  sometimes  assumed  as  proved  that 
which  was  only  probable.     Grant  all  his  analogies  of 

19 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  gens  and  the  communal  dwelling,  the  fact  still 
is  that  in  studying  the  Central  American  remains  we 
find  ourselves  dealing  with  a  race  who  had  got  be- 
yond mere  household  architecture,  and  were  rising  to 
the  sphere  of  art,  so  that  their  attempts  in  this  re- 
spect must  enter  into  our  estimate.  In  studying 
them  from  this  point  of  view,  we  encounter  new  dif- 
ficulties which  Morgan  wholly  ignores,  and  which 
later  investigators  have  not  as  yet  satisfactorily  ex- 
plained. The  tales  of  the  Spanish  conquerors  are 
scarcely  harder  to  accept  than  the  assumption  that 
all  the  artistic  decoration  of  the  Yucatan  edifices  was 
lavished  upon  communal  houses,  built  only  to  be 
densely  packed  with  Indians  "in  the  Middle  Status 
of  Barbarism,"  as  Morgan  calls  them.  That  a  statue 
like  that  of  Chaac-Mol,  discovered  by  Dr.  Le  Plon- 
geon  at  Chichen-Itza,  should  have  been  produced  by 
a  race  not  differing  in  descent  or  essential  habits  from 
the  northern  Iroquois  seems  simply  incredible. 

Consider  the  difference.  In  Central  America  we 
find  the  remains  of  a  race  which  had  begun  to  busy 
itself  with  the  very  highest  department  of  art — the 
delineation  of  the  human  figure;  and  which  had  at- 
tained to  grace  and  vigor,  if  not  yet  to  beauty,  in 
this  direction.  The  stately  stone  heads  of  Yucatan; 
the  arch  and  spirited  features  depicted  on  the  Maya 
incense-burners;  the  fine  face  carved  in  sandstone, 
brought  from  Topila,  and  now  in  possession  of  the 
New  York  Historical  Society — these  indicate  a  sphere 
of  development  utterly  beyond  that  of  those  northern 
Indians  whose  utmost  achievement  consists  in  some 
graceful  vase  like  that  found  in  Burlington,  Ver- 
mont, and  now  preserved  by  the  university  there. 

It  is  safer  to  leave  the  question  where  it  was  left 

20 


THE    FIRST    AMERICANS 

by  another  deceased  American  archaeologist  scarcely- 
less  eminent  than  Morgan,  and  not  less  courageous, 
but  far  more  gentle  and  more  guarded — Samuel  Foster 
Haven,  of  Worcester,  Massachusetts,  the  accom- 
plished librarian  of  the  American  Antiquarian  So- 
ciety :  "  Mr.  Morgan  has  grasped  some  of  the  problems 
of  aboriginal  character  and  habits  with  a  firm  and 
vigorous  hand,  but  is  far  from  being  entitled  to  claim 
that  he  has  discovered  the  entire  secret  of  prehistoric 
life  on  this  continent." 

But  now  suppose  the  modern  theory  to  be  accepted 
in  its  fulness.  Let  us  agree,  for  the  moment,  with 
Morgan,  that  there  was  in  America,  when  discovered, 
but  one  race  of  Indians  besides  the  Eskimo  —  the 
Red  Race.  Still  there  lies  behind  us  the  problem, 
in  whose  solution  science  has  hardly  yet  gained  even 
a  foothold,  Whence  did  this  race  originate?  Here 
we  deliberately  confuse  ourselves  a  little  by  the  word 
"discovery."  When  we  speak  of  the  discovery  of 
America  we  always  mean  the  arrival  of  Europeans, 
forgetting  that  there  was  possibly  a  time  when  Eu- 
rope itself  was  first  discovered  by  Asiatics,  and  that 
for  those  Asiatics  it  was  almost  as  easy  to  discover 
America.  All  that  is  necessary,  even  at  this  day,  to 
bring  a  Japanese  junk  to  the  Pacific  coast  of  North 
America  is  that  it  should  be  blown  out  to  sea  and 
then  lose  its  rudder;  the  first  mishap  has  often  hap- 
pened, the  second  casualty  has  almost  always  follow- 
ed, and  the  Gulf  Stream  of  the  Pacific,  the  Kuro  Siwo, 
or  "black  stream,"  or  "Japan  current,"  has  done 
the  rest.  Mr.  Charles  W.  Brooks,  of  San  Francisco, 
had  a  record  of  no  less  than  a  hundred  such  instances, 
and  there  is  no  reason  why  similar  events  should  not 
have  been  occurring  for  centuries.     Nor  is  it,  indeed. 

21 


HISTORY    OF    THE     UNITED    STATES 

needful  to  go  so  far  as  this  for  a  means  of  communi- 
cation. Bering  Strait  is  but  little  wider  than  the 
English  Channel,  and  it  is  as  easy  to  make  the  pas- 
sage from  Asia  to  America  as  from  France  to  Eng- 
land ;  and  indeed  easier  for  half  the  year,  when  Bering 
Strait  is  frozen.  Besides  all  this,  both  geology  and 
botany  indicate  that  the  separation  between  the  two 
continents  did  not  always  exist.  Dr.  Asa  Gray,  our 
highest  botanical  authority,  early  pointed  out  the 
extraordinary  identity  between  the  Japanese  flora 
and  that  of  the  northern  United  States,  as  indicat- 
ing a  period  when  the  two  continents  were  one.  The 
colonization  of  America  from  Asia  was  thus  prac- 
ticable, at  any  rate,  and  that  far  more  easily  than 
any  approach  from  the  European  side.  The  simple 
races  on  each  side  of  Bering  Strait,  which  now  com- 
municate with  each  other  freely,  may  have  done  the 
same  from  very  early  times.  They  needed  no  con- 
sent of  sovereigns  to  do  it:  they  were  not  obliged  to 
wait  humbly  in  the  antechamber  of  some  king,  suing 
for  permission  to  discover  for  him  another  world. 
This  we  must  recognize  at  the  outset ;  but  when  it  is 
granted,  we  are  still  upon  the  threshold.  Concede 
that  America  is  but  an  outlying  Asia,  it  does  not 
follow  that  America  was  peopled  from  Asia;  the 
course  of  population  may  first  have  gone  the  other 
way.  Or  it  may  be  that  the  human  race  had  upon 
each  continent  an  autochthonous  or  indigenous  place, 
according  as  we  prefer  a  hard  Greek  word  or  a  hard 
Latin  word  to  express  the  simple  fact  that  a  race 
comes  into  existence  on  a  certain  soil  instead  of 
migrating  thither.  Migrations,  too,  in  plenty  may 
in  this  case  have  come  afterwards,  and  modified  the 
type,  giving    to    it  that  Asiatic    or  Mongoloid  cast 

22 


THE    FIRST    AMERICANS 

which  is  now  acknowledged  by  almost   all  ethnol- 
ogists. 

How  long  may  this  process  of  migration  and  min- 
gling have  gone  on  upon  the  American  continent? 
Who  can  tell?  Sir  John  Lubbock  says  ''not  more 
than  three  thousand  years."  The  late  John  Fiske 
concluded  that  there  had  been  no  appreciable  com- 
munication between  America  and  Asia  for  at  least 
twenty  thousand  years.  Plainly  it  is  not  so  easy  to 
fix  a  limit.  To  be  sure,  some  evidences  of  antiquity 
that  are  well  established  in  Europe  are  as  yet  want- 
ing in  America,  or  at  least  imperfectly  proved.  In 
the  French  bone-caves  there  have  been  found  un- 
questionable representations  of  the  mammoth  scratch- 
ed on  pieces  of  its  own  ivory,  and  exhibiting  the 
shaggy  hair  and  curved  tusks  that  distinguish  it  from 
all  other  elephants.  There  is  as  yet  no  such  direct 
and  unequivocal  evidence  in  America  of  the  exist- 
ence of  man  during  the  interglacial  period.  The  al- 
leged evidence  fails  to  satisfy  the  more  cautious  ar- 
chaeologists. The  so-called  "elephants'  trunks"  used 
in  ornamentation  on  the  Central  American  buildings 
offer  only  a  vague  and  remote  resemblance  to  the 
supposed  originals.  The  "elephant  pipe"  dug  up  in 
Iowa,  and  preserved  by  the  Davenport  Academy  of 
Sciences,  does  not  quite  command  confidence  as  to 
its  genuineness.  The  "Elephant  Mound,"  described 
and  figured  in  the  Smithsonian  Report  for  1872,  has 
a  merely  suggestive  resemblance,  like  most  of  the 
mounds,  to  the  objects  whose  name  it  bears.  Lap- 
ham  long  since  pointed  out  that  the  names  of 
"Lizard  Mound,"  "Serpent  Mound,"  and  the  like, 
are  usually  based  on  very  remote  similarities;  and 
Squier  tells  us  of  one  mound  which  had  been  likened 

23 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

successively  to  a  bird,  a  bow  and  arrow,  and  a 
man. 

Other  sources  of  evidence  are  scarcely  more  sat- 
isfactory. There  is  no  doubt  that  mammoth  bones 
have  been  found  mingled  with  arrow-heads  in  some 
places,  and  with  matting  or  pottery  in  others;  but 
unhappily  some  doubt  rests  as  yet  on  all  these  dis- 
coveries. It  is  in  no  case  quite  sure  that  the  deposits 
had  remained  undisturbed  as  found,  or  that  they 
had  not  been  washed  together  by  floods  of  water. 
Up  to  the  present  time  the  strongest  argument  in 
favor  of  the  very  early  existence  of  man  upon  this 
continent  is  not  to  be  found  in  such  comparatively 
simple  lines  of  evidence,  but  in  the  investigations  of 
Dr.  Abbott  among  primeval  implements  in  New 
Jersey,  or  those  of  Professor  J.  D.  Whitney  among 
human  remains  in  California.  These  and  similar  in- 
quiries may  yet  conclusively  establish  the  fact  that 
the  aboriginal  American  man  was  contemporary 
with  the  mammoth ;  in  the  mean  time  it  is  only  pos- 
sible, not  quite  proved. 

Must  we  not  admit  that  in  our  efforts  to  explain 
the  origin  of  the  first  American  man  it  is  necessary  to 
end,  after  all,  with  an  interrogation  mark? 


II 

WHEN    THE    VIKINGS    CAME 

THE  American  antiquarians  of  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century  had  a  great  dislike  to  any- 
thing vague  or  legendary,  and  they  used  to  rejoice 
that  there  was  nothing  of  that  sort  about  the  dis- 
covery of  America.  The  history  of  other  parts  of 
the  world,  they  said,  might  begin  in  myth  and  tra- 
dition, but  here  at  least  was  firm  ground,  a  definite 
starting-point,  plain  outlines,  and  no  vague  and 
shadowy  romance.  Yet  they  were  destined  to  be 
disappointed,  and  it  may  be  that  nothing  has  been 
lost,  after  all.  Our  low  American  shores  would  look 
tame  and  uninteresting  but  for  the  cloud  and  mist 
which  are  perpetually  trailing  in  varied  beauty  above 
them,  giving  a  constant  play  of  purple  light  and  pale 
shadow,  and  making  them  deserve  the  name  given 
to  such  shores  by  the  old  Norse  legends,  "  Wonder- 
strands/'  It  is  the  same,  perhaps,  with  our  early 
history.  It  may  be  fitting  that  the  legends  of  the 
Northmen  should  come  in,  despite  all  the  resistance 
of  antiquarians,  to  supply  just  that  indistinct  and 
vague  element  which  is  needed  for  picturesqueness. 
At  any  rate,  whether  we  like  it  or  not,  the  legends 
are  here. 

I  can  well  remember,  as  a  boy,  the  excitement 
produced  among  Harvard  College  professors  when  the 

25 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

ponderous  volume  called  Antiquitates  Americanos, 
containing  the  Norse  legends  of  "Vinland,"  with 
the  translations  of  Professor  Rafn,  made  its  appear- 
ance on  the  library  table.  For  the  first  time  the 
claim  was  openly  made  that  there  had  been  Eu- 
ropean visitors  to  this  continent  before  Columbus. 
The  historians  shrank  from  the  innovation :  it  spoiled 
their  comfort.  Indeed,  George  Bancroft  would  hard- 
ly allude  to  the  subject,  and  set  aside  the  legends, 
using  a  most  inappropriate  phrase,  as  "  mythological." 
And  it  so  happened,  as  will  appear  by-and-by,  that 
when  the  claim  was  first  made  it  was  encumbered 
with  some  very  poor  arguments.  Nevertheless,  the 
main  story  was  not  permanently  hurt  by  these  weak 
points.  Its  truth  has  never  been  successfully  im- 
peached; at  any  rate,  we  cannot  deal  completely 
with  American  history  unless  we  give  some  place  to 
the  Norse  legends.  Picturesque  and  romantic  in 
themselves,  they  concern  men  in  whom  we  have 
every  reason  to  be  interested.  These  Northmen,  or 
Vikings,  were  not  a  far-away  people  with  whom  we 
have  nothing  in  common,  but  they  really  belonged 
to  the  self -same  race  of  men  with  most  of  ourselves. 
They  were,  perhaps,  the  actual  ancestors  of  some 
living  Americans,  and  kinsfolk  to  the  majority.  Men 
of  the  same  race  conquered  England,  and  were  known 
as  Saxons;  then  conquered  France,  and  were  known 
as  Normans;  and  finally  crossed  over  from  France 
and  conquered  England  again.  These  Norse  Vikings 
were,  like  most  of  us,  Scandinavians,  and  so  were 
really  closer  to  us  in  blood  and  in  language  than  was 
the  great  Columbus. 

What  were  the  ways  and  manners  of  these  Vikings  ? 
We  must  remember  at  the  outset  that  their  name 

26 


WHEN    THE    VIKINGS    CAME 

implies  nothing  of  ro>alty.  They  were  simply  the 
dwellers  on  a  vikt  or  bay.  They  were,  in  other  words, 
the  sea-side  population  of  the  Scandinavian  penin- 
sula, the  only  part  of  Europe  which  then  sent  forth 
a  race  of  sea-rovers.  They  resembled  in  some  re- 
spects the  Algerine  corsairs  of  a  later  period,  but,  un- 
like the  Algerines,  they  were  conquerors  as  well  as 
pirates,  and  were  ready  to  found  settlements  where  - 
ever  they  went.  Nor  were  the  Vikings  yet  Chris- 
tians, for  their  life  became  more  peaceful  from  the 
time  when  Christianity  came  among  them.  In  the 
prime  of  their  heathenism  they  were  the  terror  of 
Europe.  They  carried  their  forays  along  the  whole 
coast.  They  entered  the  ports  of  England,  and 
touched  at  the  islands  on  the  Scottish  coast.  They 
sailed  up  French  rivers,  and  Charlemagne,  the  ruler 
of  western  Europe,  was  said  to  have  wept  at  seeing 
their  dark  ships.  They  reached  the  Mediterranean, 
and  formed  out  of  their  own  number  the  famous 
Varangian  guard  of  the  later  Greek  emperors,  the 
guard  which  is  described  by  Walter  Scott  in  Count 
Robert  of  Paris.  They  reached  Africa,  which  they  call- 
ed "Saracens'  Land,"  and  there  took  eighty  castles. 
All  their  booty  they  sent  back  to  Norway,  and  this 
wealth  included  not  only  what  they  took  from  ene- 
mies, but  what  they  had  from  the  very  courts  they 
served;  for  it  was  the  practice  at  Constantinople, 
when  an  emperor  died,  for  the  Norse  guard  to  go 
through  the  palaces  and  take  whatever  they  could 
hold  in  their  hands.  To  this  day  Greek  and  Arabic 
gold  coins  and  chains  may  be  found  in  the  houses 
of  the  Norwegian  peasants,  or  seen  in  the  museums 
of  Christiania  and  Copenhagen. 

Such  were  the  Vikings,  and  it  is  needless  to  say  that 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

with  such  practices  they  were  in  perpetual  turmoil  at 
home,  and  needed  a  strong  hand  to  keep  the  peace 
among  them.  Sometimes  a  king  would  make  a  foray 
among  his  own  people,  as  recorded  in  this  extract 
from  the  Heimskrtngla,  or  Kings  of  Norway,  written 
by  Snorri  Sturleson,  and  translated  by  Laing: 

"King  Harald  heard  that  the  Vikings,  who  were  in  the 
West  Sea  in  winter,  plundered  far  and  wide  in  the  middle 
part  of  Norway,  and  therefore  every  summer  he  made  an 
expedition  to  search  the  isles  and  outskerries  [outlying  rocks] 
on  the  coast.  Wheresoever  the  Vikings  heard  of  him  they 
all  took  to  flight,  and  most  of  them  out  into  the  open  ocean. 
At  last  the  king  grew  weary  of  this  work,  and  therefore  one 
summer  he  sailed  with  his  fleet  right  out  into  the  West  Sea. 
First  he  came  to  Shetland,  and  he  slew  all  the  Vikings  who 
could  not  save  themselves  by  flight.  Then  King  Harald 
sailed  southward  to  the  Orkney  Islands,  and  cleared  them 
all  of  Vikings.  Thereafter  he  proceeded  to  the  Hebrides, 
plundered  there,  and  slew  many  Vikings  who  formerly  had 
had  men-at-arms  under  them.  Many  a  battle  was  fought, 
and  King  Harald  was  always  victorious.  He  then  plun- 
dered far  and  wide  in  Scotland  itself,  and  had  a  battle  there." 

We  see  from  the  last  sentence  that  King  Harald 
himself  was  but  a  stronger  Viking,  and  that,  after 
driving  away  other  plunderers,  he  did  their  work  for 
himself.  Such  were  all  the  Norsemen  of  the  period ; 
they  were  daring,  generous,  open  -  handed.  They 
called  gold  in  their  mythology  "the  serpent's  bed," 
and  called  a  man  who  was  liberal  in  giving  ' '  a  hater 
of  the  serpent's  bed,"  because  such  a  man  parts  with 
gold  as  with  a  thing  he  hates.  But  they  were  cruel, 
treacherous,  unscrupulous.  Harald,  when  he  com- 
manded the  emperor's  body-guard  at  Constantinople 
and  was  associated  with  Greek  troops,  always  left 
his  allies  to  fight  for  themselves  and  be  defeated,  and 

28 


WHEN    THE    VIKINGS    CAME 

only  fought  where  his  Norsemen  could  fight  alone 
and  get  all  the  glory.  While  seeming  to  defend  the 
Emperor  Michael,  he  enticed  him  into  his  power  and 
put  out  his  eyes.  The  Norse  chronicles  never  con- 
demn such  things;  there  is  never  a  voice  in  favor  of 
peace  or  mercy;  but  they  assume,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  that  a  leader  will  be  foremost  in  attack  and 
last  in  retreat.  In  case  of  need  he  must  give  his  life 
for  his  men.  There  is  no  finer  touch  in  Homer  than 
is  found  in  one  of  the  sagas  which  purport  to  describe 
the  Norse  voyages  to  Vinland.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered, in  order  to  understand  it,  that  the  Northmen 
believed  that  certain  seas  were  infested  with  the 
teredo,  or  ship-worm,  and  that  vessels  in  those  seas 
were  in  the  very  greatest  danger. 

"Bjarni  Grimalfson  was  driven  with  his  ship  into  the 
Irish  Ocean,  and  they  came  into  a  worm-sea,  and  straight- 
way began  the  ship  to  sink  under  them.  They  had  a  boat 
which  was  smeared  with  seal  oil,  for  the  sea-worms  do  not 
attack  that.  They  went  into  the  boat,  and  then  saw  that  it 
could  not  hold  them  all.  Then  said  Bjarni:  'Since  the  boat 
cannot  give  room  to  more  than  the  half  of  our  men,  it  is  my 
counsel  that  lots  should  be  drawn  for  those  to  go  in  the 
boat,  for  it  shall  not  be  according  to  rank.'  This  thought 
they  all  so  high-minded  an  offer  that  no  one  would  speak 
against  it.  They  then  did  so  that  lots  were  drawn,  and  it 
fell  upon  Bjarni  to  go  in  the  boat,  and  the  half  of  the  men 
with  him,  for  the  boat  had  not  room  for  more.  But  when 
they  had  gotten  into  the  boat,  then  said  an  Icelandic  man 
who  was  in  the  ship,  and  had  come  with  Bjarni  from  Ice- 
land, 'Dost  thou  intend,  Bjarni,  to  separate  from  me  here?' 
Bjarni  answered,  'So  it  turns  out.'  Then  said  the  other, 
'  Very  different  was  thy  promise  to  my  father  when  I  went 
with  thee  from  Iceland  than  thus  to  abandon  me,  for  thou 
saidst  that  we  should  both  share  the  same  fate.'  Bjarni 
replied :  '  It  shall  not  be  thus.  Go  thou  down  into  the  boat, 
and  I  will  go  up  into  the  ship,  since  I  see  that  thou  art  so 

29 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

desirous  to  live.'  Then  went  Bjarni  up  into  the  ship,  but 
this  man  down  into  the  boat,  and  after  that  continued  they 
their  voyage  until  they  came  to  Dublin,  in  Ireland,  and 
told  there  these  things.  But  it  is  most  people's  belief  that 
Bjarni  and  his  companions  were  lost  in  the  worm-sea,  for 
nothing  was  heard  of  them  since  that  time." 

Centuries  have  passed  since  the  ships  of  the  Vi- 
kings floated  on  the  water,  and  yet  we  know,  almost 
as  if  they  had  been  launched  yesterday,  their  model 
and  their  build.  They  are  found  delineated  on  rocks 
in  Norway,  and  their  remains  have  been  dug  up  from 
beneath  the  ground.  One  of  them  was  unearthed 
from  a  mound  of  blue  clay  at  Gokstad,  or  Sandefjord, 
in  Norway,  at  a  point  now  half  a  mile  from  the  sea ; 
and  it  had  plainly  been  used  as  the  burial-place  of 
its  owner.  The  sepulchral  chamber  in  which  the 
body  of  the  Viking*  had  been  deposited  was  built 
amidships,  being  tentlike  in  shape,  and  made  of  logs 
placed  side  by  side,  leaning  against  a  ridge-pole.  In 
this  chamber  were  found  human  bones,  the  bones  of 
a  little  dog,  the  bones  and  feathers  of  a  peacock,  some 
fish-hooks,  and  several  bronze  and  lead  ornaments 
for  belts  and  harness.  Round  about  the  ship  were 
found  the  bones  of  nine  or  ten  horses  and  dogs,  which 
had  probably  been  sacrificed  at  the  time  of  the  burial. 
The  vessel  was  seventy-seven  feet  eleven  inches  at  the 
greatest  length,  and  sixteen  feet  eleven  inches  at  the 
greatest  width,  and  from  the  top  of  the  keel  to  the 
gunwale  amidships  she  was  five  feet  nine  inches  deep. 
She  had  twenty  ribs,  and  would  draw  less  than  four 
feet  of  water.  She  was  clinker  -  built ;  that  is,  had 
plates  slightly  overlapped,  like  the  shingles  on  the 
side  of  a  house.  The  planks  and  timbers  of  the 
frame  were  fastened  together  with  withes  made  of 

30 


WHEN    THE    VIKINGS    CAME 

roots,  but  the  oaken  boards  of  the  side  were  united 
by  iron  rivets  firmly  clinched.  The  bow  and  stern 
were  similar  in  shape,  and  must  have  risen  high  out 
of  water,  but  were  so  broken  that  it  was  impossible 
to  tell' how  they  originally  ended.  The  keel  was 
deep,  and  made  of  thick  oak  beams,  and  there  was 
no  trace  of  any  metallic  sheathing;  but  an  iron  an- 
chor was  found  almost  rusted  to  pieces.  There  was 
no  deck,  and  the  seats  for  rowers  had  been  taken 
out.  The  oars  were  twenty  feet  long,  and  the  oar- 
holes,  sixteen  on  each  side,  had  slits  sloping  towards 
the  stern  to  allow  the  blades  of  the  oars  to  be  put 
through  from  inside. 

The  most  peculiar  thing  about  the  ship  was  the 
rudder,  which  was  on  trie  starboard  or  right  side,  this 
side  being  originally  called  "steerboard"  from  this 
circumstance.  The  rudder  was  like  a  large  oar,  with 
long  blade  and  short  handle,  and  was  attached,  not 
to  the  side  of  the  boat,  but  to  the  end  of  a  conical 
piece  of  wood  which  projected  almost  a  foot  from  the 
side  of  the  vessel,  and  almost  two  feet  from  the  stern. 
This  piece  of  wood  was  bored  down  its  length,  and 
no  doubt  a  rope  passing  through  it  secured  the  rud- 
der to  the  ship's  side.  It  was  steered  by  a  tiller  at- 
tached to  the  handle,  and  perhaps  also  by  a  rope 
fastened  to  the  blade.  As  a  whole,  this  disinterred 
vessel  proved  to  be  anything  but  the  rude  and  primi- 
tive craft  which  might  have  been  expected;  it  was 
neatly  built  and  well  preserved,  constructed  on  what 
a  sailor  would  call  beautiful  lines,  and  eminently 
fitted  for  sea  service.  Many  such  vessels  may  be 
found  depicted  on  the  celebrated  Bayeux  tapestry; 
and  the  peculiar  position  of  the  rudder  explains  the 
treaty  mentioned  in  the  Heimskrtngla,  giving  to  Nor- 

3* 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

way  all  lands  lying  west  of  Scotland  between  which 
and  the  main-land  a  vessel  could  pass  with  her  rudder 
shipped. 

The  vessel  thus  described  is  preserved  at  Chris- 
tiania.  It  was  not  one  of  the  very  largest  ships,  for 
some  of  them  had  thirty  oars  on  each  side,  and  ves- 
sels carrying  from  twenty  to  twenty-five  were  not 
uncommon.  The  largest  of  these  were  called  Drag- 
ons, and  other  sizes  were  known  as  Serpents  or 
Cranes.  The  ship  itself  was  often  so  built  as  to 
represent  the  name  it  bore :  the  dragon,  for  instance, 
was  a  long,  low  vessel,  with  the  gilded  head  of  a  drag- 
on at  the  bow,  and  the  gilded  tail  at  the  stern ;  the 
moving  oars  at  the  side  might  represent  the  legs  of 
the  imaginary  creature,  the  row  of  shining  red  and 
white  shields  that  were  hung  over  the  gunwale  looked 
like  the  monster's  scales,  and  the  sails  striped  with 
red  and  blue  might  suggest  his  wings.  The  ship  pre- 
served at  Christiania  is  described  as  having  had  but  a 
single  mast,  set  into  a  block  of  wood  so  large  that  it 
is  said  no  such  block  could  now  be  cut  in  Norway. 
Probably  the  sail  was  much  like  those  still  carried 
by  large  open  boats  in  that  country — a  single  square 
sail  on  a  mast  some  forty  feet  long.  These  masts 
have  no  standing  rigging,  and  are  taken  down  when 
not  in  use ;  and  this  was  probably  the  practice  of  the 
Vikings. 

In  case  of  danger  these  sea-rovers  trusted  chiefly  to 
their  oars.  Once,  when  King  Harald's  fleet  was  on 
its  way  back  to  Norway  with  plunder  from  Denmark, 
the  vessels  lay  all  night  at  anchor  in  the  fog,  and 
when  the  sun  pierced  the  fog  in  the  morning  it  seemed 
as  if  many  lights  were  burning  in  the  sea.  Then 
Harald  said:  "It  is  a  fleet  of  Danish  ships,  and  the 

32 


WHEN    THE    VIKINGS    CAME 

sun  strikes  on  the  gilded  dragon-heads:  furl  the  sail, 
and  take  to  the  oars."  The  Norse  ships  were  heavy 
with  plunder,  while  the  Danish  ships  were  light. 
Harald  first  threw  overboard  light  wood,  and  placed 
upon  it  clothing  and  goods  of  the  Danes,  that  they 
might  see  them  and  pick  them  up ;  then  he  threw  over- 
board his  provisions,  and  lastly  his  prisoners.  The 
Danes  stopped  for  these,  and  the  Norwegians  got  off 
with  the  rest.  It  was  only  the  chance  of  war  that 
saved  the  fugitives ;  had  they  risked  a  battle  and  lost 
it,  they  would  have  been  captured,  killed,  or  drowned. 
Yet  it  was  not  easy  to  drown  them ;  they  rarely  went 
far  from  shore,  and  they  were,  moreover,  swimmers 
from  childhood,  even  in  the  icy  waters  of  the  North, 
and  they  had  the  art,  in  swimming,  of  hiding  their 
heads  beneath  their  floating  shields,  so  that  it  was 
hard  to  find  them.  They  were  full  of  devices.  It  is 
recorded  of  one  of  them,  for  instance,  that  he  always 
carried  tinder  in  a  walnut  shell,  enclosed  in  a  ball  of 
wax,  so  that,  no  matter  how  long  submerged,  he 
could  make  a  fire  on  reaching  shore. 

How  were  these  rovers  armed  and  dressed  ?  They 
fought  with  stones,  arrows,  and  spears;  they  had 
grappling-irons  on  board,  with  which  to  draw  other 
vessels  to  them;  and  the  fighting-men  were  posted 
on  the  high  bows  and  sterns,  which  sometimes  had 
scaffoldings  or  even  castles  on  them,  so  that  missiles 
could  be  thrown  down  on  other  vessels.  As  to  their 
appearance  on  land,  it  is  recorded  that  when  Sweinke 
and  his  five  hundred  men  came  to  a  "thing,"  or 
council,  in  Norway,  all  were  clad  in  iron,  with  their 
weapons  bright,  and  they  were  so  well  armed  that 
they  looked  like  pieces  of  shining  ice.  Other  men 
present  were  clad  in  leathern  cloaks,  with  halberds  on 
s  33 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

their  shoulders  and  steel  caps  on  their  heads.  Si- 
gurd, the  king's  messenger,  wore  a  scarlet  coat  and 
a  blue  coat  over  it,  and  he  rose  and  told  Sweinke 
that  unless  he  obeyed  the  king's  orders  he  should 
be  driven  out  of  the  country.  Then  Sweinke  rose, 
threw  off  his  steel  helmet,  and  retorted  on  him : 

"Thou  useless  fellow,  with  a  coat  without  arms  and  a 
kirtle  with  skirts,  wilt  thou  drive  me  out  of  the  country? 
Formerly  thou  wast  not  so  mighty,  and  thy  pride  was  less 
when  King  Hakon,  my  foster-son,  was  in  life.  Then  thou 
wast  as  frightened  as  a  mouse  in  a  mouse-trap,  and  hid 
thyself  under  a  heap  of  clothes,  like  a  dog  on  board  of  a 
ship.  Thou  wast  thrust  into  a  leather  bag  like  corn  into 
a  sack,  and  driven  from  house  to  farm  like  a  year-old  colt; 
and  dost  thou  dare  to  drive  me  from  the  land?  Let  us 
stand  up  and  attack  him!" 

Then  they  attacked,  and  Sigurd  escaped  with  great 
difficulty. 

The  leaders  and  kings  wore  often  rich  and  costly 
garments.  When  King  Magnus  landed  in  Ireland, 
with  his  marshal  Eyvind,  to  carry  away  cattle,  he 
had  a  helmet  on  his  head,  a  red  shield  in  which  was 
inlaid  a  gilded  lion,  and  was  girt  with  the  sword 
"Legbiter,"  of  which  the  hilt  was  of  tooth  (ivory), 
and  the  hand -grip  wound  about  with  gold  thread, 
and  the  sword  was  extremely  sharp.  "In  his  hand 
he  had  a  short  spear,  and  a  red  silk  short  cloak  over 
his  coat,  on  which,  both  before  and  behind,  was  em- 
broidered a  lion  in  yellow  silk,  and  all  men  acknowl- 
edged that  they  had  never  seen  a  brisker,  statelier 
man.  Eyvind  had  also  a  red  silk  coat  like  the  king's, 
and  he  also  was  a  stout,  handsome,  warlike  man." 
But  the  ascendency  of  the  chief  did  not  come  from 
his  garments ;  it  consisted  in  personal  power  of  mind 

34 


•       WHEN    THE    VIKINGS    CAME 

and  prowess  of  body,  and  when  these  decayed  the 
command  was  gone.  Such  were  the  fierce,  frank 
men  who,  as  is  claimed,  stretched  their  wanderings 
over  the  western  sea,  and  at  last  reached  Vinland — 
that  is  to  say,  the  continent  of  North  America. 

What  led  the  Northmen  to  this  continent  ?  A  triv- 
ial circumstance  first  drew  them  westward,  after  they 
had  already  colonized  Iceland  and  made  it  their  home. 
Those  who  have  visited  the  Smithsonian  Institution 
at  Washington  will  remember  the  great  carved  door- 
posts, ornamented  with  heads,  which  are  used  by  the 
Indians  of  the  northwest  coasts.  It  is  to  a  pair  of 
posts  somewhat  like  these,  called  by  the  Northmen 
setstokka,  or  seat-posts,  that  we  owe  the  discovery 
of  Greenland,  and  afterwards  of  Vinland.  When  the 
Northmen  removed  from  one  place  to  another,  they 
threw  these  seat-posts  into  the  sea  on  approaching 
the  shore,  and  wherever  the  posts  went  aground  there 
they  dwelt.  Erik  the  Red,  a  wandering  Norseman 
who  was  dwelling  in  Iceland,  had  lent  his  posts  to  a 
friend,  and  could  not  get  them  back.  This  led  to  a 
quarrel,  and  Erik  was  declared  an  outlaw.  He  went 
to  sea  and  discovered  Greenland,  which  he  thus 
called  because,  he  said,  "  people  will  be  attracted 
thither  if  the  land  has  a  good  name."  There  he  took 
up  his  abode,  leading  a  colony  with  him,  about  a.d. 
986,  fifteen  years  before  Christianity  was  established 
by  law  in  Iceland.  The  colony  prospered,  and  there 
is  evidence  that  the  climate  of  Greenland  was  then 
milder  and  that  it  supported  a  far  larger  population 
than  now.  The  ruined  churches  of  Greenland  still 
testify  to  a  period  of  prosperity  quite  beyond  the 
present. 

With  Erik  the  Red  went  a  man  named  Heriulf 

35 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Bardson.  Biarni,  or  Bjarni,  this  Heriulf's  son,  was 
absent  from  home  when  they  left;  he  wras  himself  a 
rover,  but  had  always  spent  his  winters  with  his 
father,  and  resolved  to  follow  him  to  Greenland, 
though  he  warned  his  men  that  the  voyage  was  im- 
prudent, since  none  of  them  had  sailed  in  those  seas. 
He  sailed  westward,  was  lost  in  fogs,  and  at  last  came 
to  a  land  with  small  hills  covered  with  wood.  This 
could  not,  he  thought,  be  Greenland;  so  he  turned 
about,  and,  leaving  this  land  to  larboard,  "  let  the  foot 
of  the  sail  look  towards  land,"  that  is,  sailed  away 
from  land.  He  came  to  another  land,  flat  and  still 
wooded.  Then  he  sailed  seaward  with  a  southwest 
wind  for  two  days,  when  they  saw  another  land,  but 
thought  it  could  not  be  Greenland  because  there 
were  no  glaciers.  The  sailors  wished  to  land  for 
wood  and  water,  but  Bjarni  would  net — "but  he  got 
some  hard  speeches  for  that  from  his  sailors,"  the 
saga,  or  legend,  says.  Then  they  sailed  out  to  sea 
with  a  southwest  wind  for  three  days,  and  saw  a 
third  land,  mountainous  and  with  glaciers,  and  seem- 
ing to  be  an  island ;  and  after  this  they  sailed  four 
days  more,  and  reached  Greenland,  where  Bjarni 
found  his  father,  and  lived  with  him  ever  after. 

But  it  seems  that  the  adventurous  countrymen  of 
Bjarni  were  quite  displeased  with  him  for  not  ex- 
ploring farther ;  and  at  last  a  daring  man  named  Leif 
bought  Bjarni's  ship,  and  set  sail,  with  thirty-five 
companions,  to  explore  southward  and  westward. 
First  they  reached  the  land  which  Bjarni  had  last 
seen,  the  high  island  with  the  glaciers,  and  this  they 
called  Helluland,  or  "Flat-stone  Land."  Then  they 
came  to  another  land  which  they  called  Marckland. 
or  "Woodland."     Then  they  sailed  two  days  with  a 

36 


WHEN    THE    VIKINGS    CAME 

northeast  wind,  and  came  to  land  with  an  island 
north  of  it;  and,  landing  on  this  island,  they  found 
sweet  dew  on  the  grass,  which  has  been  explained  as 
the  honey-dew  sometimes  left  by  an  insect  called 
aphis.  This  pleased  them,  like  great  boys  as  they 
were;  then  they  sailed  between  the  island  and  the 
land;  then  the  ship  ran  aground,  but  was  at  last 
lifted  by  the  tide,  when  they  sailed  up  a  river  and 
into  a  lake ;  and  there  they  cast  anchor,  and  brought 
their  sleeping-cots  on  shore  and  remained  a  long 
time. 

They  built  houses  there  and  spent  the  winter ;  there 
were  salmon  in  the  lake,  the  winter  was  very  mild,  and 
day  and  night  were  more  equal  than  in  Greenland. 
They  explored  the  land,  and  one  day  a  man  of  their 
number,  Leif's  foster-brother,  named  Tyrker,  came 
from  a  long  expedition  and  told  Leif,  in  great  excite- 
ment, that  he  had  some  news  for  him ;  he  had  found 
grape-vines  and  grapes.  "Can  that  be  true,  my 
foster-brother?"  said  Leif.  "Surely  it  is  true,"  he 
said,  "for  I  was  brought  up  where  there  is  no  want 
of  grape-vines  and  grapes" — he  being  a  German. 
The  next  day  they  filled  their  long-boat  with  grapes, 
and  in  the  spring  they  sailed  back  to  Greenland  with 
a  ship's  load  of  tree-trunks — much  needed  there — 
and  with  the  news  of  the  newly  discovered  land, 
called  Vinland,  or  "  Wine-land."  Leif  was  ever  after 
known  as  "Leif  the  Lucky,"  from  this  success. 

But  still  the  Norsemen  in  Greenland  thought  the 
new  region  had  been  too  little  explored,  so  Thorwald, 
Leif's  brother,  took  the  same  ship,  and  made  a  third 
trip,  with  thirty  men.  He  reached  the  huts  the 
other  party  had  built,  called  in  the  legends  Leifsbudir, 
or  "Leif's  booths."     They  spent  two  winters  there, 

37 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

fishing  and  exploring,  and  in  the  second  summer  their 
ship  was  aground  under  a  ness,  or  cape,  to  the  north- 
ward, and  they  had  to  repair  it.  The  broken  keel 
they  set  up  on  the  ness  as  a  memorial,  and  called  it 
Kialarness.  Afterwards  they  saw  some  of  the  na- 
tives for  the  first  time,  and  killed  all  but  one,  in  their 
savage  way.  Soon  after  there  came  forth  from  a 
bay  "innumerable  skin-boats,"  and  attacked  them. 
The  men  on  board  were  what  they  called  "  Skraelings," 
or  dwarfs,  and  they  fought  with  arrows,  one  of  which 
killed  Thorwald,  and  he  was  buried,  with  a  cross  at  the 
head  of  his  grave,  on  a  cape  which  they  called  Krossa- 
ness,  or  "Cross  Cape."  The  saga  reminds  us  that 
"  Greenland  was  then  Christianized,  but  Erik  the  Red 
had  died  before  Christianity  came  thither." 

Thorwald' s  men  went  back  to  Greenland  without 
him,  their  ship  being  loaded  with  grape-vines  and 
grapes.  The  next  expedition  to  Vinland  was  a  much 
larger  one,  headed  by  a  rich  man  from  Norway  named 
Karlsefne,  who  had  dwelt  with  Leif  in  Greenland, 
and  had  been  persuaded  to  come  on  this  enterprise. 
He  brought  a  colony  of  sixty  men  and  five  women, 
and  they  had  cattle  and  provisions.  They  found  a 
place  where  a  river  ran  out  from  the  land,  and  through 
a  lake  into  the  sea ;  one  could  not  enter  from  the  sea 
except  at  high -water.  They  found  vines  growing 
and  fields  of  wild  wheat;  there  were  fish  in  the  lake 
and  wild  beasts  in  the  woods.  Here  they  established 
themselves  at  a  place  called  Hop,  from  the  Icelandic 
word  hdpa,  to  recede,  meaning  an  inlet  from  the 
ocean.  Here  they  dwelt,  and  during  the  first  sum- 
mer the  natives  came  in  skin-boats  to  trade  with  them 
— a  race  described  as  black  and  ill-favored,  with  large 
eyes  and  broad  cheeks  and  with  coarse  hair  on  their 

38 


WHEN    THE    VIKINGS    CAME 

heads.  On  their  first  landing  these  visitors  passed 
near  the  cattle,  and  were  so  frightened  by  the  bellow- 
ing of  the  bull  that  they  ran  away  again.  The  na- 
tives brought  all  sorts  of  furs  to  sell,  and  wished  for 
weapons,  but  those  were  refused  by  Karlsefne,  who 
had  a  more  profitable  project,  which  the  legends  thus 
describe:  "He  took  this  plan — he  bade  the  women 
bring  out  their  dairy  stuff  for  them  [milk,  butter,  and 
the  like],  and  so  soon  as  the  Skraelings  saw  this  they 
would  have  that  and  nothing  more.  Now  this  was 
the  way  the  Skraelings  traded:  they  bore  off  their 
wares  in  their  stomachs,  but  Karlsefne  and  his  com- 
panions had  their  bags  and  skin  wares,  and  so  they 
parted."  This  happened  again,  and  then  one  of  the 
Norsemen  killed  a  native,  so  that  the  next  time  they 
came  as  enemies,  armed  with  slings  and  raising  upon 
a  pole  a  great  blue  ball,  which  they  swung  at  the 
Norsemen  with  great  noise.  It  may  have  been  only 
an  Eskimo  harpoon  with  a  bladder  attached,  but  it 
had  its  effect ;  the  Norsemen  were  terrified  and  were 
running  away,  when  a  woman  named  Freydis,  daugh- 
ter of  Erik  the  Red,  stopped  them  by  her  reproaches, 
and  urged  them  on.  "Why  do  ye  run,"  she  said, 
"  stout  men  as  ye  are,  before  these  miserable  wretches, 
whom  I  thought  ye  would  knock  down  like  cattle? 
If  I  had  weapons  methinks  I  could  fight  better  than 
any  of  you."  With  this  she  took  up  a  sword  that 
lay  beside  a  dead  man,  the  fight  was  renewed,  and 
the  Skraelings  were  beaten  off. 

There  is  a  curious  account  of  one  "large  and  hand- 
some man,"  who  seemed  to  be  the  leader  of  the 
Skraelings.  One  of  the  natives  took  up  an  axe,  a 
thing  which  he  had  apparently  never  seen  before, 
and  struck  at  one  of  his  companions  and  killed  him. 

39 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Upon  which  this  leader  took  the  axe  and  threw  i1 
into  the  sea  in  terror,  and  after  this  they  all  retreat- 
ed and  came  no  more.  Karlsefne's  wife  had  a  chile 
that  winter  who  was  called  Snorri,  and  the  child  i< 
said  to  have  been  the  ancestor  of  some  famous  Scan- 
dinavians, including  Thorwaldsen  the  sculptor.  Bu1 
in  spring  they  all  returned  to  Greenland  with  a  loac 
of  valuable  timber,  and  thence  went  to  Iceland,  sc 
that  Snorri  grew  up  there  and  his  children  after  him 
One  more  attempt  was  made  to  colonize  Vinland 
but  it  failed  through  the  selfishness  of  a  woman  whe 
had  organized  it — the  same  Freydis  who  had  showr 
so  much  courage,  but  who  was  also  cruel  and  grasp- 
ing; and  after  her  return  to  Greenland,  perhaps  in 
1 013,  we  hear  no  more  of  Vinland,  except  as  a  thing 
of  the  past. 

There  are  full  accounts  of  all  these  events,  from 
manuscripts  of  good  authority,  preserved  in  Iceland 
the  chief  narratives  being  the  saga  of  Erik  the  Red 
and  the  Karlsefne  saga,  the  one  having  been  written 
in  Greenland,  the  other  in  Iceland.  These  have  been 
repeatedly  translated  into  various  languages.  There 
are  half  a  dozen  other  references  of  undoubted  au- 
thority in  later  Norse  manuscripts  to  ''Vinland  the 
Good"  as  a  region  well  authenticated.  Mingled  with 
these  are  other  allusions  to  a  still  dimmer  and  more 
shadowy  land  beyond  Vinland,  and  called  "White- 
man's  Land,"  or  "Ireland  the  Mickle,"  a  land  said 
to  be  inhabited  by  men  in  white  garments,  who 
raised  flags  or  poles.  But  this  is  too  remote  and  un- 
certain to  be  seriously  described. 

Such  is  the  Norse  legend  of  the  visit  of  the  Vikings; 
but  to  tell  the  tale  in  its  present  form  gives  very 
little    impression    of    the    startling    surprise    with 

40 


WHEN    THE    VIKINGS    CAME 

which  it  came  before  the  community  of  scholars. 
It  was  not  a  new  story  to  the  Scandinavian  schol- 
ars: the  learned  antiquary  Torfaeus  knew  almost 
as  much  about  it  in  1707  as  we  know  to-day. 
But  when  Professor  Rafn  published,  in  1837,  his 
great  folio  volume  in  half  a  dozen  different  lan- 
guages, he  thought  he  knew  a  great  deal  more 
about  the  whole  affair  than  was  actually  the  case, 
for  he  mingled  the  Norse  legend  with  the  Dighton 
Rock  and  the  Old  Mill  at  Newport,  and  with  other 
alleged  memorials  of  the  Northmen  in  America — 
matters  which  have  since  turned  out  to  be  no  me- 
morials at  all.  The  great  volume  of  Antiquitates 
Americana  contains  no  less  than  twelve  separate  en- 
gravings of  the  Dighton  Rock,  some  of  them  so  un- 
like one  another  that  it  seems  impossible  that  they 
can  have  been  taken  from  the  same  inscription.  Out 
of  some  of  them  Dr.  Rafn  found  no  difficulty  in  de- 
ciphering the  name  of  Thorfinn  and  the  figures 
CXXXI,  being  the  number  of  Thorwald's  party.  Dr. 
T.  A.  Webb,  then  secretary  of  the  Rhode  Island  His- 
torical Society,  supplied  also  half  a  dozen  other  in- 
scriptions from  rocks  in  Massachusetts  and  Rhode 
Island,  which  are  duly  figured  in  the  great  folio;  and 
another  member  of  the  Danish  Historical  Society, 
taking  Dr.  Webb's  statements  as  a  basis,  expanded 
them  with  what  seems  like  deliberate  ingenuity,  but 
was  more  likely  simple  blundering.  Dr.  Webb  stated, 
for  instance,  that  there  were  "in  the  western  part  of 
our  country  numerous  and  extensive  mounds,  simi- 
lar to  the  tumuli  that  are  so  often  met  with  in  Scandi- 
navia, Russia,  and  Tartary,  also  the  remains  of  for- 
tifications, etc."  Beamish,  with  the  usual  vague 
notion  of  Europeans  as  to  American  geography,  sub- 

41 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

stituted  "county"  for  "country,"  and  then  assigned 
all  these  vast  remains  to  "the  western  part  of  the 
county  of  Bristol,  in  the  State  of  Massachusetts." 
And  the  same  writer,  with  still  bolder  enterprise, 
carrying  his  imaginary  traces  of  the  Northmen  into 
South  America,  gives  a  report  of  a  huge  column  dis- 
covered near  Bahia,  in  Brazil,  bearing  a  colossal  fig- 
ure with  the  hand  pointing  to  the  north  pole.  It 
was  more  than  suspected  from  certain  inscriptions, 
according  to  Beamish,  that  this  also  bore  a  Scandi- 
navian origin. 

For  some  reason  or  other  the  Old  Mill  at  Newport 
did  not  play  a  prominent  part  in  the  great  volume 
of  Professor  Rafn,  but  he  published  a  pamphlet  at 
Copenhagen  in  1841,  under  the  name  of  Americas 
Opdagelse,  containing  a  briefer  account  of  the  dis- 
coveries, and  this  contains  no  less  than  seven  full- 
page  engravings  of  the  Newport  structure,  all  in- 
tended to  prove  its  Norse  origin.  But  all  these  fan- 
cies are  now  swept  away.  The  Norse  origin  of  the  Old 
Mill  has  found  no  scientific  supporters  since  the  Rev. 
C.  T.  Brooks  and  Dr.  John  Gorham  Palfrey  showed 
that  there  was  just  such  a  mill  at  Chesterton,  Eng- 
land, the  very  region  from  which  Governor  Benedict 
Arnold  came,  who,  in  his  will,  made  in  1678,  spoke 
of  the  Newport  building  as  "my  stone-built  wind- 
mill," and  who  undoubtedly  copied  its  structure  from 
the  building  remembered  from  his  boyhood. 

The  Norse  origin  claimed  for  the  Dighton  Rock  has 
also  been  set  aside  in  a  somewhat  similar  way.  So 
long  as  men  believed  with  Dr.  Webb  that  "nowhere 
throughout  our  wide-spread  domain  is  a  single  in- 
stance of  their  [the  Indians]  having  recorded  their 
deeds  or  history  on  stone,"  it  was  quite  natural  to 

42 


WHEN    THE    VIKINGS    CAME 

look  to  some  unknown  race  for  the  origin  of  this 
single  inscription.  But  now,  when  the  volumes  of 
western  exploration  and  the  reports  of  the  Bureau 
of  Ethnology  are  full  of  inscriptions  whose  Indian 
origin  is  undoubted,  this  view  has  disappeared.  If 
we  compare  a  representation  of  the  Dighton  Rock,  as 
it  now  appears,  and  one  of  the  Indian  inscriptions 
transcribed  in  New  Mexico  by  Lieutenant  Simpson, 
we  can  hardly  doubt  that  the  two  had  essentially  a 
common  origin.  There  are  the  same  crudely  exe- 
cuted and  elongated  human  figures,  and  the  same 
series  of  crosses,  easily  interpreted,  when  horizontal, 
into  letters  and  figures. 

All  these  supposed  Norse  remains  being  ruled  out 
of  the  question,  we  must  draw  our  whole  evidence 
from  the  Norse  sagas  themselves.  On  this  part  of 
the  subject,  also,  there  is  now  a  general  consent  of 
experts.  There  can  scarcely  be  a  doubt  that  the 
Norsemen  at  an  early  period  not  only  settled  in 
Greenland,  but  visited  lands  beyond  Greenland,  which 
lands  could  only  have  been  a  part  of  the  continent 
of  North  America.  This  Bancroft  himself  concedes 
as  probable.  It  is  true  that  this  conclusion  rests  on 
the  sagas  alone,  and  that  these  were  simple  oral  tra- 
ditions, written  down  perhaps  two  centuries  after 
the  events,  while  the  oldest  existing  manuscripts  are 
dated  two  centuries  later  still.  Most  of  the  early 
history  of  northern  Europe,  however,  and  of  England 
itself,  rests  upon  very  similar  authority;  and  there 
is  no  reason  to  set  this  kind  of  testimony  aside  merely 
because  it  relates  to  America.  But  when  we  come 
to  fix  the  precise  topography  of  their  explorations, 
we  have  very  few  data  left  after  the  Dighton  Rock 
and  the  Newport  Mill  are  struck  out  of  the  evidence. 

43 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

We  can  argue  nothing  from  the  rate  of  sailing,  for 
we  do  not  know  how  often  the  travellers  sailed  all 
night,  and  how  often  they  followed  the  usual  Norse 
method  of  anchoring  at  dark.  Little  weight  is  now 
attached  to  the  alleged  astronomical  calculation  in 
the  sagas,  to  the  effect  that  in  Vinland,  on  the  short- 
est day,  the  sun  rose  at  half -past  seven  and  set  at 
half-past  four,  which  would  show  the  place  to  have 
been  somewhere  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mount  Hope 
Bay.  Closer  observation  has  shown  that  no  such  as- 
sertion as  that  here  made  is  to  be  found  in  the  Norse 
narrative.  The  Norsemen  did  not  divide  their  time 
into  days  and  hours,  but,  like  sailors,  into  "watches." 
A  watch  included  three  hours,  and  the  legends  only" 
say  that  the  sun  rose,  on  that  day,  within  the  watch 
called  "  Dagmalastad,"  and  set  in  that  called  "Eyk- 
tarstad"  ("  Sol  hovdi  thar  Eyktarstad  ok  Dagmala- 
stad  um  Skamdegi ").  This  fact  greatly  impressed  the 
Norse  imagination,  as  in  Iceland  it  rose  and  set  with- 
in one  .and  the  same  watch.  But  this  gives  no  means 
for  any  precise  calculation,  inasmuch  as  there  is  a 
range  of  six  hours  between  the  longest  and  the  short- 
est estimate  that  might  be  founded  upon  it.  As  a 
consequence,  Rafn's  calculation  puts  Vinland  about 
the  latitude  of  410,  or  Mount  Hope  Bay,  while  Tor- 
faeus  places  it  about  490,  or  near  Newfoundland.  It 
is,  after  all,  as  has  been  remarked  by  Dr.  William 
Everett,  about  as  definite  as  if  the  sagas  had  told  us 
that  in  Vinland  daylight  lasted  from  breakfast-time 
till  the  middle  of  the  afternoon. 

The  argument  founded  on  climate  is  inconclusive 
and  contradictory.  Wild  grapes  grow  in  Rhode  Isl- 
and, and  they  also  grow  in  Canada  and  Nova  Scotia. 
The  Northmen  found  no  frost  during  their  first  winter 

44 


WHEN    THE    VIKINGS    CAME 

in  Vinland ;  but  it  is  also  recorded  that  in  Iceland  dur- 
ing a  certain  winter  there  was  no  snow.  If  the  cli- 
mate of  Greenland  was  milder  in  those  days,  so  it 
may  have  been  with  Labrador.  Coincidences  of  name 
amount  to  almost  as  little.  The  name  of  Wood's 
Hole,  on  the  coast  of  Massachusetts,  was  for  a  time 
altered  to  Wood's  Holl,  to  correspond  to  the  Norse 
name  for  hill.  Mount  Hope  Bay,  commonly  derived 
from  the  Indian  Montaup,  has  been  carried  further 
back,  and  has  been  claimed  to  represent  the  Hop 
where  Leif's  booths  were  built,  although  the  same 
Indian  word  occurs  in  many  other  places.  All  his- 
tory shows  that  nothing  is  less  to  be  relied  upon  than 
these  analogies.  How  unanswerable  seemed  the  sug- 
gestion of  the  old  traveller  Howell  that  the  words 
"elf"  and  ''goblin"  represented  the  long  strife  be- 
tween Guelf  and  Ghibelline  in  Italy,  until  it  turned 
out  that  "elf"  and  "goblin"  were  much  the  older 
words ! 

There  are  scarcely  two  interpreters  who  agree  as 
to  the  places  visited  by  the  Northmen,  and  those  who 
are  surest  in  their  opinions  are  usually  those  who  live 
farthest  from  the  points  described.  Professor  Rafn 
and  Professor  Horsford  found  Vinland  along  the  coast 
of  New  England;  Professor  Rask,  the  former's  con- 
temporary, found  it  in  Nova  Scotia,  Newfoundland,  or 
Labrador.  The  latter  urged,  with  much  reason,  that 
it  was  far  easier  to  discover  wild  grapes  in  Nova 
Scotia  than  to  meet  Eskimo  in  what  is  now  Rhode 
Island;  and  that  the  whole  story  of  the  terror  of  the 
Skraelings  before  the  bull  indicates  an  island  people 
like  those  of  Newfoundland  or  Prince  Edward  Isl- 
and, and  certainly  not  the  New  England  Indians, 
who  were  familiar  with  the  moose,  and  might  have 

45 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

seen  the  buffalo.  He  might  also  have  added,  what 
was  first  pointed  out  by  J.  Elliot  Cabot,  that  the  re- 
peated voyages  from  Greenland  to  Vinland,  and  the 
perfect  facility  with  which  successive  explorers  found 
the  newly  discovered  region,  indicate  some  spot  much 
nearer  Greenland  than  Mount  Hope  Bay,  which  would 
have  required  six  hundred  miles  of  intricate  and  dan- 
gerous coast  navigation,  without  chart  or  compass, 
in  order  to  reach  it.  Again,  Rafn  finds  it  easy  to 
place  the  site  of  Leif's  booths  at  Bristol,  Rhode  Isl- 
and, and  M.  Gravier,  a  Frenchman,  writing  in  1874, 
has  not  a  doubt  upon  the  subject.  But  a  sail  from 
Fall  River  to  Newport,  or,  indeed,  a  mere  study  of  the 
map,  will  show  any  dispassionate  person  that  the 
description  given  by  the  sagas  has  hardly  anything 
in  common  with  the  Rhode  Island  locality.  The 
sagas  describe  an  inland  lake  communicating  with 
the  sea  by  a  shallow  river  only  accessible  at  high- tide, 
whereas  Mount  Hope  Bay  is  a  broad  expanse  of  salt 
water  opening  into  the  still  wider  gulf  of  Narragansett 
Bay,  and  communicating  with  the  sea  by  a  passage 
wide  and  deep  enough  for  the  navies  of  the  world  to 
enter.  Even  supposing  the  Northmen  to  have  found 
their  way  in  through  what  is  called  the  Seaconnet 
Passage,  the  description  does  not  apply  much  better 
to  that.  Even  if  it  did,  these  hardy  sailors  must 
have  recognized,  the  moment  they  reached  the  bay 
itself,  that  they  had  come  in  at  the  back  door,  not  at 
the  front ;  and  the  main  access  to  the  ocean  must  in- 
stantly have  revealed  itself.  The  whole  interpreta- 
tion, which  seems  so  easy  to  transatlantic  writers,  is 
utterly  rejected  by  Professor  Henry  Mitchell,  some- 
time director  of  the  Coast  Survey.  And  the  same 
vagueness  and  indefiniteness  mark  all  the  descriptions 

46 


WHEN    THE    VIKINGS    CAME 

of  the  Northmen.  Nothing  is  more  difficult  than  to 
depict  in  words  with  any  accuracy  in  an  unscientific 
age  the  features  of  a  low  and  monotonous  sea-shore; 
and  this,  with  the  changes  undergone  by  the  coast 
of  southern  New  England  during  nine  hundred  years, 
renders  the  identification  of  any  spot  visited  by  the 
Northmen  practically  impossible. 

The  Maine  Historical  Society  has  reprinted  a  map 
of  the  North  Atlantic  made  by  the  Icelander  Sigurd 
Stephanius  in  the  year  1570,  and  preserved  by  the 


NORTH  ATLANTIC,  BY  THE   ICELANDER  SIGURD 
STEPHANIUS,    IN    1570 


Scandinavian  historian  Torfaeus  in  his  Gronlandia 
Antiqua  (1706).  In  this  map  all  that  is  south  of 
Greenland,  including  Vinland,  is  a  part  of  one  conti- 
nent.    Helluland  and  Marckland  appear  upon  it,  and 

47 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Vinland  is  a  promontory  extending  forth  from  the  land 
of  the  Skraelings.  But  whether  this  abrupt  cape  is 
meant  to  represent  Cape  Cod,  as  some  would  urge,  or 
the  far  more  conspicuous  headlands  of  Newfoundland 
or  Nova  Scotia,  must  be  left  to  conjecture.  The  fact 
that  it  is  in  the  same  latitude  with  the  southern  part  of 
England  would  indicate  the  more  northern  situation ; 
and  it  is  to  be  noted  that  all  these  promontories  are 
depicted  as  mountainous  —  a  character  which  the 
Northmen,  accustomed  to  the  heights  of  Iceland  and 
Greenland,  could  hardly  have  applied  to  what  must 
have  seemed  to  them  the  trivial  elevations  of  Cape 
Cod  or  Mount  Hope  Bay.  A  sand-hill  two  hundred 
feet  high  would  ijardly  have  done  duty  for  a  moun- 
tain on  a  map  made  in  Iceland.  But  the  chaotic 
geography  of  the  whole  map — in  which  England  is 
thrown  out  into  mid -ocean,  Iceland  appears  nearly 
as  large  as  England,  one  of  the  Shetland  Islands  is 
as  large  as  Ireland,  and  the  imaginary  island  of  Fris- 
land  is  fully  displayed — affords  a  sufficient  warning 
against  taking  too  literally  any  details  contained  in 
the  sagas.  If  learned  Icelanders  were  so  utterly  un- 
able, five  centuries  later,  to  depict  the  Europe  which 
they  knew  so  well,  how  could  their  less  -  learned  an- 
cestors have  given  any  accurate  topography  of  the 
America  which  they  knew  so  little?  They  did  not 
give  it;  but  the  same  activity  of  imagination  which 
enabled  Professor  Rafn  to  find  the  name  of  Thorwald 
in  an  Indian  inscription  might  well  permit  him  to 
identify  Krossaness  with  Sound  Point  and  Vinland 
with  Nantucket. 

Unless  authentic  Norse  remains  are  hereafter  un- 
earthed, there  is  very  little  hope  of  ever  identifying 
a  single  spot  where  the  Vikings  landed  or  a  single  in- 

48 


WHEN    THE    VIKINGS    CAME 

let  ever  furrowed  by  their  keels.  But  that  these  bold 
rovers  in  sailing  westward  discovered  lands  beyond 
Greenland  is  as  sure  as  anything  can  be  that  rests  on 
sagas  and  traditions  only — as  sure,  that  is,  as  most 
things  in  the  earliest  annals  of  Europe.  They  dis- 
covered America;  what  part  of  America  is  of  little 
consequence.  They  discovered  it  without  clear  in- 
tention and  by  a  series  of  what  might  almost  be 
called  coasting  voyages,  stretching  from  Norway  to 
Scotland,  from  Scotland  to  Iceland,  and  thence  to 
Greenland,  and  at  last  to  the  North  American  conti- 
nent, each  passage  extending  but  a  few  hundred  miles, 
though  those  miles  lay  through  stormy  and  icy  seas. 
They  made  these  discoveries  simply  as  adventurers. 
There  is  nothing  in  their  achievement  worthy  to  be 
compared  with  the  great  deed  of  Columbus,  when  he 
formed  with  deliberate  dignity  a  heroic  purpose  and 
set  sail  across  an  unknown  sea  upon  the  faith  of  a 
conviction.  As  compared  with  him  and  his  com- 
panions, the  Vikings  seem  but  boys  beside  men. 


Ill 

THE    SPANISH    DISCOVERERS 

ABOUT  1854  Mr.  Kinney,  the  American  minister 
i  at  the  court  of  Turin,  was  conversing  with  a 
young  Italian  of  high  rank  from  the  island  of  Sar- 
dinia, who  had  come  to  Turin  for  education.  This 
young  man  remarked  that  he  had  lately  heard  about 
a  great  Spanish  or  Italian  navigator  who  had  sailed 
westward  from  Spain,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  fif- 
teenth century,  with  the  hope  of  making  discoveries. 
Did  Mr.  Kinney  know  what  had  become  of  that  ad- 
venturer—had he  been  heard  of  again,  and,  if  so,  what 
had  he  accomplished?  This,  it  seemed,  was  all  that 
was  known  in  Sardinia  respecting  the  fame  and  deeds 
of  Columbus.  The  world  at  large  is  a  little  better  off, 
and  can  at  least  tell  what  Columbus  found.  But 
whether  he  really  first  found  it,  and  is  entitled  to  the 
name  of  discoverer,  has  of  late  been  treated  as  an  un- 
settled question.  He  long  since  lost  the  opportu- 
nity of  giving  his  name  to  the  new  continent ;  there 
have  been  hot  disputes  as  to  whether  he  really  first 
reached  it.  It  has  even  been  doubted  whether  there 
ever  was  such  a  person  as  Columbus  at  all. 

What  does  discovery  mean  ?  in  what  does  it  consist  ? 
If  the  'Vikings  had  already  visited  the  American 
shore,  could  it  be  rediscovered  ?  Was  it  not  easy  for 
Columbus  to  visit  Iceland,  to  hear  the  legends  of  the 

50 


THE    SPANISH    DISCOVERERS 

Vikings,  and  to  follow  in  their  path?  These  are 
questions  that  have  been  often  asked.  The  answer 
is  that  Columbus  may  have  visited  Iceland,  possibly 
heard  the  Viking  legends,  but  certainly  did  not  fol- 
low in  the  path  they  indicated.  To  follow  them  would 
have  been  to  make  a  series  of  successive  voyages,  as 
they  did,  each  a  sort  of  coasting  trip,  from  Norway 
to  Iceland,  from  Iceland  to  Greenland,  from  Green- 
land to  Vinland.  To  follow  them  would  have  been 
to  steer  north-northwest,  whereas  his  glory  lies  in  the 
fact  that  he  sailed  due  west  into  the  open  sea  and 
found  America.  His  will  begins,  "In  the  name  of 
the  Most  Holy  Trinity,  who  inspired  me  with  the  idea, 
and  afterwards  confirmed  me  in  it,  that  by  travers- 
ing the  ocean  westwardly"  etc.  "Thus  accurately  did 
he  state  his  own  title  to  fame.  So  far  as  climate  and 
weather  were  concerned,  he  actually  incurred  less 
risk  than  the  Northmen;  but  when  we  consider  that 
he  sailed  directly  out  across  an  unknown  ocean  on 
the  faith  of  a  theory,  his  deed  was  incomparably 
greater. 

There  is  one  strong  reason  for  believing  that  Co- 
lumbus knew  but  vaguely  of  the  Norse  voyages,  or  did 
not  know  of  them  at  all,  or  did  not  connect  the  Vinland 
they  found  with  the  India  he  sought.  This  is  a 
fact,  that  he  never,  so  far  as  we  know,  used  their 
success  as  an  argument  in  trying  to  persuade  other 
people.  For  eight  years,  by  his  own  statement,  he 
was  endeavoring  to  convert  men  to  his  project.  "  For 
eight  years,"  he  says,  "  I  was  torn  with  disputes,  and 
my  project  was  matter  of  mockery"  (cosa  de  burla). 
During  this  time  he  never  made  one  convert  among 
those  best  qualified,  through  either  theory  or  prac- 
tice, to  form  an  opinion— "  not  a  pilot,  nor  a  sailor, 

51 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

nor  a  philosopher,  nor  any  kind  of  scientific  man," 
he  says,  "put  any  faith  in  it."  Now  these  were 
precisely  the  men  whom  the  story  of  Vinland,  if  he 
had  been  able  to  quote  it,  might  have  convinced. 
The  fact  that  they  were  not  convinced  shows  that 
they  were  not  told  the  story;  and  if  Columbus  did 
not  tell  it,  the  reason  must  have  been  either  that  he 
did  not  know  it  or  did  not  attach  much  weight  to 
it.  He  would  have  told  it  if  only  to  shorten  his  own 
labor  in  argument;  for  in  converting  practical  men 
an  ounce  of  Vinland  would  have  been  worth  a  pound 
of  cosmography.  Certainly  he  knew  how  to  deal 
with  individual  minds,  and  he  could  well  adapt  his 
arguments  to  each  one.  The  way  in  which  he  man- 
aged his  sailors  on  his  voyage  shows  that  he  sought 
all  manner  of  means  to  command  confidence.  He 
would  have  treated  his  hearers  to  all  the  tales  in  the 
sagas  if  that  would  have  helped  the  matter;  the 
Skraelings  and  the  unipeds,  or  one-legged  men,  of 
the  Norse  legends  would  have  been  discussed  by 
many  a  Genoese  or  Portuguese  fireside;  and  Colum- 
bus might  never  have  needed  to  trouble  Ferdinand 
and  Isabella  with  his  tale.  We  may  safely  assume 
that  if  he  knew  the  traditions  about  Vinland,  they 
made  no  special  impression  on  his  mind. 

Why  should  they  have  made  much  impression? 
The  Northmen  themselves  had  had  five  hundred 
years  to  forget  Vinland,  and  had  employed  the  time 
pretty  effectually  for  that  purpose.  None  of  them 
had  continued  to  go  there.  Even  if  it  met  the  ears 
of  Columbus,  Vinland  may  well  have  seemed  but  one 
more  island  in  the  northern  seas,  and  very  remote 
indeed  from  that  gorgeous  India  which  Marco  Polo 
had  described,  and  which  was  the  subject  of  so  many 

52 


THE    SPANISH    DISCOVERERS 

dreams.  More  than  all,  Columbus  was  a  man  of  ab- 
stract thought,  whose  nature  it  was  to  proceed  upon 
theories,  and  he  fortified  himself  with  the  traditions 
of  philosophers,  authorities  of  whom  the  Northmen 
had  never  heard.  That  one  saying  of  the  cosmog- 
rapher  Aliaco,  quoting  Aristotle,  had  more  weight 
with  one  like  Columbus  than  a  ship's  crew  of  Vikings 
would  have  had:  "  Aristotle  holds  that  there  is  but  a 
narrow  sea  (parvutn  mare)  between  the  western  points 
of  Spain  and  the  eastern  border  of  India."  Ferdi- 
nand Columbus  tells  us  how  much  influence  that  sen- 
tence had  with  his  father ;  but  we  should  have  known 
it  at  any  rate. 

When  he  finally  set  sail  (August  3,  1492),  it  was 
with  the  distinct  knowledge  that  he  should  have  a 
hard  time  of  it  unless  Aristotle's  " narrow  sea"  proved 
very  narrow  indeed.  Instead  of  extending  his  knowl- 
edge to  the  sailors  and  to  the  young  adventurers  who 
sailed  with  him,  he  must  keep  them  in  the  dark, 
must  mislead  them  about  the  variations  of  the  mag- 
netic needle,  and  must  keep  a  double  log-book  of  his 
daily  progress,  putting  down  the  actual  distance 
sailed,  and  then  a  smaller  distance  to  tell  the  men, 
in  order  to  prevent  them  from  being  more  homesick 
than  the  day  before.  It  was  hard  enough,  at  any 
rate.  The  sea  into  which  they  sailed  was  known  as 
the  Sea  of  Darkness — Mare  Tenebrosum,  the  Bahral- 
Zulmat  of  the  Arabians.  It  had  been  described  by 
an  Arab  geographer  a  century  before  as  "a  vast  and 
boundless  ocean,  on  which  ships  dare  not  venture 
out  of  sight  of  land,  for  even  if  they  knew  the  direc- 
tion of  the  winds,  they  would  not  know  whither  those 
winds  would  carry  them,  and  as  there  is  no  inhabited 
country  beyond,  they  would  run  great  risk  of  being 

53 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

lost  in  mist  and  vapor."  We  must  remember  that 
at  that  period  the  telescope  and  quadrant  were  not 
yet  invented,  and  the  Copernican  system  was  undis- 
covered. It  was  a  time  when  the  compass  itself  was 
so  imperfectly  known  that  its  variations  were  not  rec- 
ognized; when  Mercator's  system  of  charts,  now  held 
so  essential  to  the  use  even  of  the  compass,  were  not 
devised.  The  compass  was  of  itself  an  object  of 
dread  among  the  ignorant,,  as  being  connected  with 
enchantment.  One  of  its  Spanish  names,  bruxula,  was 
derived  from  bruxo,  sl  sorcerer. 

No  one  knew  the  exact  shape  of  the  earth;  Colum- 
bus believed  in  his  third  voyage  that  it  was  pear- 
shaped.  Somewhere  near  the  stalk  of  the  pear,  he 
thought,  was  the  Earthly  Paradise;  somewhere  else 
there  was  Chaos,  or  Erebus.  As  to  the  size  of  the 
earth,  that  was  wholly  underestimated,  else  no  one 
could  have  believed  that  the  ocean  which  lay  west 
of  Europe  was  the  same  that  lay  east  of  Asia.  In 
sailing  over  those  waters,  no  one  knew  what  a  day 
might  bring  forth.  Above  them,  it  was  thought  by 
some,  hovered  the  gigantic  bird  known  as  the  roc — 
familiar  to  the  readers  of  Stndbad  the  Sailor — which 
was  large  enough  to  grasp  a  ship  with  all  its  crew 
and  fly  away  with  it  into  upper  air.  Columbus  him- 
self described  three  mermaids,  and  reported  men 
with  tails,  men  with  dogs'  heads,  and  one-eyed  men. 
In  the  history  of  Peter  Martyr,  one  of  those  who  first 
recorded  the  discoveries  of  Columbus,  the  innocent 
cetacean  called  the  manatee  became  a  half -mythologi- 
cal monster  covered  with  knobbed  scales  and  with  a 
head  like  an  ox;  it  could  carry  a  dozen  men  on  its 
back,  and  was  kind  and  gentle  to  all  but  Christians, 
to  whom  it  had  an  especial  aversion.     Philoponus 

54 


THE    SPANISH    DISCOVERERS 

has  delineated  the  manatee,  and  De  Bry  has  pictured 
the  imaginary  beings  that  Columbus  saw. 

The  old  maps  peopled  the  ocean  depths  with  yet 
more  frightful  and  mysterious  figures;  and  the  Arab 
geographers,  prohibited  by  their  religion  from  por- 
traying animals  real  or  imaginary,  supplied  their 
place  by  images  even  more  terrific,  as  that  of  the 
black  and  clinched  hand  of  Satan  rising  above  the 
waves  in  the  guise  of  an  overhanging  rock,  and  ready 
to  grasp  the  daring  sailors  who  profaned  the  Sea  of 
Darkness  with  their  presence.  When  we  think  how 
superstition,  gradually  retiring  from  the  world,  still 
keeps  its  grasp  upon  the  sailors  of  to-day,  we  can 
imagine  how  it  must  have  ruled  the  ignorant  seamen 
of  Columbus.  The  thoughtful,  lonely  ways  of  their 
admiral  made  him  only  an  object  of  terror;  they 
yielded  to  him  with  wonderful  submission,  but  it  was 
the  homage  of  fear.  The  terror  reached  its  climax 
when  they  entered  the  vast  "  Sargasso  Sea,"  a  region 
of  Gulf -weed — a  tract  of  ocean  as  large  as  France, 
Humboldt  says — through  which  they  sailed.  Here  at 
last,  they  thought,  was  the  home  of  all  the  monsters 
depicted  in  the  charts,  who  might  at  any  moment 
rear  their  distorted  forms  from  the  snaky  sea-weed, 

"Like  demons'  endlong  tresses,  they  sailed  through." 

At  the  very  best,  they  said,  it  was  an  inundated  land 
(tterras  anegadas) — probably  the  fabled  sunken  island 
Atlantis,  of  which  they  had  heard,  whose  slime,  tra- 
dition said,  made  it  impossible  to  explore  that  sea, 
and  on  whose  submerged  shallows  they  might  at  any 
time  be  hopelessly  swamped  or  entangled.  "Are 
there  no  graves  at  home,"  they  asked  each  other,  ac- 

55 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

cording  to  Herrera,  "that  we  should  be  brought  here 
to  die?"  The  trade-winds,  afterwards  called  by  the 
friars  "winds  of  mercy,"  because  they  aided  in  the 
discovery  of  the  New  World,  were  only  winds  of  de- 
spair to  the  sailors.  They  believed  that  the  ships 
were  sailing  down  an  inclined  slope,  and  that  to  re- 
turn would  be  impossible,  since  it  blew  always  from 
home.  There  was  little  to  do  in  the  way  of  trim- 
ming sails,  for  they  sailed  almost  on  a  parallel  of  lati- 
tude from  the  Canaries  to  the  Bahamas.  Their  se- 
verest labor  was  in  pumping  out  the  leaky  ships.  The 
young  adventurers  remained  listlessly  on  deck,  or 
played  the  then  fashionable  game  of  primer o,  and 
heard  incredulously  the  daily  reports  told  by  Colum- 
bus of  the  rate  of  sailing.  They  would  have  been 
still  more  incredulous  had  they  known  the  truth. 
"They  sighed  and  wept,"  Herrera  says,  "and  every 
hour  seemed  like  a  year." 

The  same  Spanish  annalist  compares  Columbus  to 
St.  Christopher  in  the  legend  bearing  the  infant 
Christ  across  the  stream  on  his  shoulders;  and  the 
explorer  was  often  painted  in  that  character  in  those 
days.  But  the  weight  that  Columbus  had  to  bear  up 
was  a  wearisome  and  unworthy  load.  Sometimes 
they  plotted  to  throw  him  overboard  by  a  manoeuvre 
(con  disimulacion,  Herrera  says),  intending  to  say 
that  he  fell  in  while  star-gazing.  But  he,  according 
to  Peter  Martyr,  dealt  with  them  now  by  winning 
words,  now  by  encouraging  their  hopes  (blandis  modo 
verbis,  ampld  spe  modo) .  If  they  thought  they  saw 
land,  he  encouraged  them  to  sing  an  anthem;  when 
it  proved  to  be  but  cloud,  he  held  out  the  hope  of 
land  to-morrow.  They  had  sailed  August  3,  1492, 
and  when  they  had  been  out  two  months  (October 

56 


THE    SPANISH    DISCOVERERS 

3d),  he  refused  to  beat  about  in  search  of  land,  though 
he  thought  they  were  near  it,  but  .he  would  press 
straight  through  to  the  Indies.  Sometimes  there 
came  a  contrary  wind,  and  Columbus  was  cheered  by 
it,  for  it  would  convince  his  men  that  the  wind  did 
not  always  blow  one  way,  and  that  by  patient  wait- 
ing they  could  yet  return  to  Spain. 

As  the  days  went  on,  the  signs  of  land  increased, 
but  very  slowly.  When  we  think  of  the  intense  im- 
patience of  the  passengers  on  an  ocean  steamer  after 
they  have  been  six  or  seven  long  days  on  the  water, 
even  though  they  know  precisely  where  they  are  and 
where  they  are  going,  and  that  they  are  driven  by 
mechanical  forces  stronger  than  winds  or  waves,  we 
can  imagine  something  of  the  feelings  of  Columbus 
and  his  crew  as  the  third  month  wore  on.  Still  there 
was  no  sign  of  hope  but  a  pelican  to-day  and  a  crab 
to-morrow ;  or  a  drizzling  rain  without  wind — a  com- 
bination which  was  supposed  to  indicate  nearness  to 
the  shore.  There  has  scarcely  been  a  moment  in  the 
history  of  the  race  more  full  of  solemn  consequences 
than  that  evening  hour  when,  after  finding  a  carved 
stick  and  a  hawthorn  branch,  Columbus  watched 
from  the  deck  in  the  momentary  expectation  of  some 
glimpse  of  land.  The  first  shore  light  is  a  signal  of 
success  and  triumph  to  sailors  who  cross  the  Atlantic 
every  two  or  three  weeks.  What,  then,  was  it  to  the 
patient  commander  who  was  looking  for  the  first 
gleam  from  an  unknown  world  ? 

The  picturesque  old  tale  can  never  be  told  in  better 
words  than  those  in  which  the  chronicler  Herrera 
narrates  it:  "And  Christopher  Columbus,  being  now 
sure  that  he  was  not  far  off,  as  the  night  came  on, 
after  singing  the   'Salve   Regina,'   as  is  usual  with 

57 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

mariners,  addressed  them  all  and  said  that  since  God 
had  given  them. grace  to  make  so  long  a  voyage  in 
safety,  and  since  the  signs  of  land  were  becoming 
steadily  more  frequent,  he  would  beg  them  to  keep 
watch  all  night.  And  they  knew  well  that  the  first 
chapter  of  the  orders  that  he  had  issued  to  them  on 
leaving  Castile  provided  that  after  sailing  seven  hun- 
dred leagues  without  making  land,  they  should  only 
sail  thenceforth  from  the  following  midnight  to  the 
next  day;  and  that  they  should  pass  that  time  in 
prayer,  because  he  trusted  in  God  that  during  that 
night  they  should  discover  land.  And  that  besides 
the  ten  thousand  maravedis  that  their  Highnesses 
had  promised  to  him  who  should  make  the  first  dis- 
covery, he  would  give,  for  his  part,  a  velvet  jerkin." 
It  seems  like  putting  some  confusion  into  men's 
minds  to  set  them  thinking  at  one  and  the  same  time 
of  a  new  world  and  a  velvet  jerkin;  but,  after  all, 
the  prize  was  never  awarded,  for  Columbus  himself 
was  the  victor.  The  vessels  of  those  days  had  often 
a  high  structure  like  a  castle  at  bow  and  stern — 
whence  our  word  forecastle  for  the  forward  part  of 
the  ship — and  we  can  fancy  the  sailors  and  young 
adventurers  watching  from  one  of  these  while  Colum- 
bus watched  from  the  other.  The  admiral  had  the 
sharpest  eyes  or  the  highest  outlook,  and  that  night 
he  saw  a  light  which  seemed  to  move  on  the  dim 
horizon.  He  called  to  him  Pedro  Gutierrez,  who 
saw  it  at  once ;  he  called  Roderigo  Sanchez,  who  could 
not  see  it  for  some  time;  but  at  last  all  three  per- 
ceived it  beyond  doubt.  "It  appeared  like  a  candle 
that  was  raised  and  lowered.  The  admiral  did  not 
doubt  its  being  a  real  light  or  its  being  on  land ;  and 
so  it  was :  it  was  borne  by  people  who  were  going  from 

58 


THE    SPANISH    DISCOVERERS 

one  cottage  to  another."  "He  saw  that  light  in  the 
midst  of  darkness,"  adds  the  devout  Herrera,  "which 
symbolized  the  spirit  and  light  which  were  to  be 
introduced  among  these  savages."  This  sight  was 
seen  at  about  ten  o'clock  in  the  evening;  and  at  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning  land  was  actually  seen  from 
the  Pinta,  the  foremost  vessel,  by  a  sailor,  Rodrigo 
de  Triana,  who,  poor  fellow,  never  got  the  promised 
reward,  and,  as  tradition  says,  went  to  Africa  and 
became  a  Mohammedan  in  despair. 

The  landing  of  Columbus  has  been  commemorated 
by  the  fine  design  of  Turner,  engraved  in  Rogers' 
poems.  Columbus  wore  complete  armor,  with  crim- 
son over  it,  and  carried  in  his  hand  the  Spanish  flag, 
with  its  ominous  hues  of  gold  and  blood ;  his  captains 
bore  each  a  banner  with  a  green  cross  and  the  initials 
F.  and  Y.  for  "Ferdinand"  and  "Ysabel,"  sur- 
mounted by  their  respective  crowns.  They  fell  upon 
their  knees;  they  chanted  the  "Te  Deum,"  and  then 
with  due  legal  formalities  took  possession  of  the  isl- 
and on  behalf  of  the  Spanish  sovereigns.  It  was  the 
island  Guanahani,  which  Columbus  rechristened  San 
Salvador,  but  whose  precise  identity  has  always  been 
a  little  doubtful.  Navarrete  identified  it  with  Turk's 
Island ;  Humboldt  and  Irving  with  Cat  Island ;  Captain 
Fox  and  Harrisse  believe  it  to  have  been  Acklin's 
Key;  while  Captain  Becher,  of  the  English  Hydro- 
graphic  Office,  wrote  a  book  to  prove  that  it  was 
Watling's  Island;  this  view  being  the  one  now  most 
generally  accepted.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the 
island  which  made  the  New  World  a  certainty  should 
itself  remain  uncertain  of  identification  for  four  hun- 
dred years. 

With  the  glory  and  beauty  of  that  entrance  of 

59 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

European  civilization  on  the  American  continent 
there  came  also  the  shame.  Columbus  saw  and  de- 
scribed the  innocent  happiness  of  the  natives.  They 
were  no  wild  savages,  no  cruel  barbarians.  They 
had  good  faces,  he  says ;  they  neither  carried  nor  un- 
derstood weapons,  not  even  swords;  they  were  gen- 
erous and  courteous;  "very  gentle,  without  knowing 
what  evil  is,  without  killing,  without  stealing"  (muy 
mansos,  y  sin  saber  que  sea  ntal,  ni  matar  a  otros,  ni 
prender).  They  were  poor,  but  their  houses  were 
clean ;  and  they  had  in  them  certain  statues  in  female 
form,  and  certain  heads  in  the  shape  of  masks  well 
executed.  "I  do  not  know,"  he  says,  in  Navarrete's 
account,  "whether  these  are  employed  for  adorn- 
ment or  worship"  (per  hermosura  6  adoran).  The 
remains  of  Aztec  and  Maya  civilization  seem  less  ex- 
ceptional when  we  find  among  these  first-seen  aborig- 
ines the  traces  of  a  feeling  for  art. 

Columbus  seems  to  have  begun  with  that  peculiar 
mixture  of  kindness  and  contempt  which  the  best 
among  civilized  men  are  apt  to  show  towards  sav- 
ages. "  Because,"  he  said,  "  they  showed  much  kind- 
liness for  us,  and  because  I  knew  that  they  would  be 
more  easily  made  Christians  through  love  than  fear, 
I  gave  to  some  of  them  some  colored  caps,  and  some 
strings  of  glass  beads  for  their  necks,  and  many  other 
trifles,  with  which  they  were  delighted,  and  were  so 
entirely  ours  that  it  was  a  marvel  to  see."  There  is 
a  certain  disproportion  here  between  the  motive  and 
the  action.  These  innocent  savages  gave  him  a  new 
world  for  Castile  and  Leon,  and  he  gave  them  some 
glass  beads  and  little  red  caps.  If  this  had  been  the 
worst  of  the  bargain  it  would  have  been  no  great 
matter.     The  tragedy  begins  when  we  find  this  same 

6c 


THE    SPANISH    DISCOVERERS 

high-minded  admiral  writing  home  to  their  Spanish 
Majesties  in  his  very  first  letter  that  he  shall  be  able 
to  supply  them  with  all  the  gold  they  need,  with 
spices,  cotton,  mastic,  aloes,  rhubarb,  cinnamon,  and 
slaves;  "  slaves,  as  many  of  these  idolaters  as  their 
Highnesses  shall  command  to  be  shipped"  (esclavos 
quanta  mandaran  car  gar  y  seran  de  los  ydolatres). 
Thus  ended  the  visions  of  those  simple  natives  who, 
when  the  Europeans  first  arrived,  had  run  from 
house  to  house,  crying  aloud,  "Come,  come  and  see 
the  people  from  heaven"  (la  gente  del  cielo).  Some 
of  them  lived  to  suspect  that  the  bearded  visitors 
had  quite  a  different  origin. 

But  Columbus  shared  the  cruel  prejudices  of  his 
age ;  he  only  rose  above  its  scientific  ignorance.  That 
was  a  fine  answer  made  by  him  when  asked,  in  the 
council  called  by  King  Ferdinand,  how  he  knew  that 
the  western  limit  of  the  Atlantic  was  formed  by  the 
coasts  of  Asia.  "If  indeed,"  said  he,  "the  Atlantic 
has  other  limits  in  that  direction  than  the  lands  of 
Asia,  it  is  no  less  necessary  that  they  should  be  dis- 
covered, and  I  will  discover  them."  He  probably 
died  without  the  knowledge  that  he  had  found  a  new 
continent,  but  this  answer  shows  the  true  spirit  of 
the  great  admiral.  Columbus  has  been  the  subject 
•  of  much  discussion.  He  has  been  glorified  into  some- 
thing like  sainthood  by  such  Roman  Catholic  eulo- 
gists as  Roselly  de  Lorges,  has  been  attacked  with 
merciless  vituperation  by  such  writers  as  Goodrich, 
and  has  been  searchingly  criticised  by  such  scholars 
as  Justin  Winsor;  but  time  does  not  easily  dim  the 
essential  greatness  of  the  man.  Through  him  the  Old 
and  New  worlds  were  linked  together  for  good  or  for 
evil,  and,  once  united,  they  never  could  be  separated. 

61 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

There  was  another  Spanish  voyager  whose  name  will 
always  be  closely  joined  with  that  of  Columbus  and 
who  is  still  regarded  by  many  persons  as  having  un- 
justly defrauded  his  greater  predecessor,  inasmuch 
as  it  was  he,  not  Columbus,  who  gave  his  name  to  the 
New  World.  Unlike  Columbus,  Amerigo  Vespucci 
was  never  imprisoned,  enchained,  or  impoverished, 
and  was  thus  perhaps  the  happier  of  the  two  during 
his  life,  though  Columbus  himself  wrote  of  him :  "  Fort- 
une has  been  adverse  to  him  as  she  has  to  many 
others."  Since  his  death  his  fate  has  been  reversed, 
and  he  has  suffered  far  more  than  Columbus  at  the 
hands  of  posterity.  The  very  fact  that  his  name  was 
applied  to  the  American  continent  caused  many  to 
regard  him  as  but  a  base  and  malignant  man.  Ves- 
pucci's alleged  voyage  of  1497  was  doubtless  a  fabri- 
cation, and  he  probably  did  not  really  reach  the  main- 
land of  South  America  until  1499.  Yet  it  is  not  unjust, 
after  all,  that  his  name  should  have  been  given  to  the 
continent,  for  he  really  was  the  first  to  attain  and  de- 
scribe it  definitely,  although  it  may  justly  be  said  that 
after  Columbus  had  reached  the  outlying  islands  all 
else  was  but  a  question  of  time. 

The  discoveries  of  Vespucci  attracted  much  atten- 
tion in  Germany,  and  it  was  a  geographer  named 
Waldseemuller  who  first  printed,  in  1507,  one  of  his* 
letters  at  the  little  town  of  St.  Die,  in  Lorraine.  This 
same  author,  believing  "The  Land  of  the  Holy  Cross" 
to  be  a  new  quarter  of  the  globe  discovered  by  Ves- 
pucci (alia  quarta  pars  per  Americanum  Vespucium  .  .  . 
inventa),  suggested,  in  a  book  called  Cosmographies  In- 
troduction and  published  in  1 507,  the  year  after  the  death 
of  Columbus,  that  this  new  land  should  be  named  for 
Americus,  since  Europe  and  Asia  had  women's  names 

62 


THE    SPANISH    DISCOVERERS 

(Amerigen  quasi  Americi  terram  sive  Americam  dicen- 
dam  cum  et  Euro  pa  et  Asia  a  mulieribus  sua  sortita  sint 
nomina).  It  is  curious  to  read  this  sentence  in  the 
quaint,  clear  type  of  that  little  book,  copies  of  which 
may  be  found  in  the  Harvard  College  library  and  in 
other  American  collections,  and  to  think  that  every 
corner  of  this  vast  double  continent  now  owes  its 
name  to  what  was  perhaps  a  random  suggestion  of 
one  obscure  German.  The  use  of  the  title  gradually 
spread,  after  this  suggestion,  and  apparently  because 
it  pleased  the  public  ear;  but  no  two  geographers 
agreed  as  to  the  shape  of  the  land  it  represented. 
Indeed,  Waldseemuller,  a  man  who  was  not  con- 
tent with  one  hard  name  for  himself  but  must  needs 
have  two — being  called  in  Latin  Hylacomylus — 
seems  not  to  have  been  quite  sure  what  name  the 
newly  discovered  lands  should  have,  after  all.  Six 
years  after  he  had  suggested  the  name  America, 
he  printed  (in  15 13)  for  an  edition  of  Ptolemy  a  chart 
called  "Tabula  Terre  Nove,"  on  which  the  name  of 
America  does  not  appear,  but  there  is  represented  a 
southern,  continent  called  " Terra  Incognita,"  with 
an  express  inscription  saying  that  it  was  discovered 
by  Columbus.  This  shows  in  what  an  uncertain  way 
the  baptism  was  given.  The  earliest  manuscript  map 
yet  known  to  bear  the  name  "  America"  is  in  a  collec- 
tion of  drawings  by  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  now  preserved 
in  England,  this  being  probably  made  in  1 5 1 2-1 5 .  It 
was  published  in  the  London  Archczologia,  and  a  por- 
tion of  it  is  reproduced  on  the  following  page.  The 
earliest  engraved  map  bearing  the  name  was  made  at 
Vienna  in  1520.  The  globe  of  Johann  Schoner,  made 
in  1 5 1 5 ,  and  still  preserved  at  Nuremberg,  calls  what  is 
now  Brazil,  "  America  sive  [or]  Brazilia,"  thus  doubt- 

63 


HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

fully  recognizing  the  new  name;  and  it  gives  what  is 
now  known  to  be  the  northern  half  of  the  continent 
as  a  separate  island  under  the  name  of  Cuba.  It  was 
many  years  before  the  whole  was  correctly  figured 


DA    VINCI'S    MAPPEMONDE 
% 

(By  permission  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries) 

and  comprehended  under  one  name.  Every  geog- 
rapher of  those  days  distributed  the  supposed  isl- 
ands or  continents  of  the  New  World  much  as  if  he 
had  thrown  them  from  a  dice-box ;  and  the  royal  per- 
sonages who  received  gold  and  slaves  from  these  new 
regions  generally  cared  very  little  to  know  the  par- 
ticulars about  them.     The  young,  the  ardent,  and 

64 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  reckless  sought  them  for  adventure;  but  their 
vague  and  barbarous  wonders  seemed  to  princes  and 
statesmen  very  secondary  matters  compared  with 
their  own  intrigues  and  treaties  and  royal  marriages 
and  endless  wars.  Vespucci  himself  may  not  have 
known  when  his  name  was  first  used  for  the  baptism 
of  his  supposed  discoveries.  He  was  evidently  one 
of  those  who  have  more  greatness  thrust  upon  them 
than  they  have  ever  claimed  for  themselves. 

Another  of  the  great  Spanish  explorers  was  one 
who  left  Hispaniola,  it  is  said,  to  avoid  his  creditors, 
and  then  left  the  world  his  debtor  in  Darien.  Vasco 
Nunez  de  Balboa  deserves  to  be  remembered  as  one 
who  at  least  tried  to  govern  the  Indians  with  human- 
ity; yet  even  he  could  not  resist  putting  them  to  the 
torture,  by  his  own  confession  (dandd  a  unos  tormento), 
in  order  to  discover  gold.  But  he  will  be  better  re- 
membered as  the  first  civilized  discoverer  of  the  ocean 
that  covers  one-half  the  surface  of  the  globe.  Going 
forty  leagues  from  Darien  to  visit  an  Indian  chief 
named  Comogre,  the  Spaniards  received  a  sumptu- 
ous present  of  gold,  and  as  they  were  quarrelling 
about  it,  the  eldest  son  of  the  chief  grew  indignant 
at  what  he  thought  their  childishness.  Dashing  the 
scales,  gold  and  all,  to  the  ground,  he  told  them  that 
he  could  show  them  a  country  rich  enough  in  gold  to 
satisfy  all  their  greediness;  that  it  lay  by  a  sea  on 
which  there  were  ships  almost  as  large  as  theirs,  and 
that  he  could  guide  them  thither  if  they  had  the  cour- 
age. "  Our  captains, ' '  says  Peter  Martyr, ' '  marvelling 
at  the  oration  of  this  naked  young  man,  pondered  in 
their  minds,  and  earnestly  considered  these  things." 

At  a  later  time  Balboa  not  only  considered,  but 
acted,  and  with  one  hundred  and  ninety  Spaniards, 

66 


THE    SPANISH    DISCOVERERS 

besides  slaves  and  hounds,  he  fought  his  way  through 
forests  and  over  mountains  southward.  Coming 
near  the  mountain-top  whence  he  might  expect,  as 
the  Indians  had  assured  him,  to  behold  the  sea,  he 
bade  his  men  sit  upon  the  ground,  that  he  alone 
might  see  it  first.     Then  he  looked  upon  it, 

"Silent  upon  a  peak  in  Darien." 

Before  him  rolled  "the  Sea  of  the  South,"  as  it 
was  then  called  (la  Mar  del  Sur),  it  lying  southward 
of  the  isthmus  where  he  stood — as  any  map  will 
show — and  its  vast  northern  sweep  not  yet  being 
known.  This  was  on  September  25,  15 13.  On  his 
knees  Balboa  thanked  God  for  the  glory  of  that  mo- 
ment; then  called  his  men,  and  after  they  also  had 
given  thanks,  he  addressed  them,  reminding  them  of 
what  the  naked  prince  had  said,  and  pointing  out 
that  as  the  promise  of  the  southern  sea  had  been  ful- 
filled, so  might  also  that  of  the  kingdom  of  gold — as 
it  was,  indeed,  fulfilled  shortly  after  in  the  discovery 
of  Peru  by  Pizarro,  who  was  one  of  his  companions. 
Then  they  sang  the  "Te  Deum  Laudamus,"  and  a 
notary  drew  up  a  list  of  all  those  who  were  present, 
sixty-seven  in  all,  that  it  might  be  known  who  had 
joined  in  the  great  achievement.  Then  Balboa  took 
formal  possession  of  the  sea  and  all  that  was  in  it  in  be- 
half of  Spain;  he  cut  down  trees,  made  crosses,  and 
carved  upon  the  tree  trunks  the  names  of  Spanish 
kings.  Descending  to  the  sea,  some  days  later,  with 
his  men,  he  entered  it,  with  his  sword  on,  and  stand- 
ing up  to  his  thighs  in  the  water,  declared  that  he 
would  defend  it  against  all  comers  as  a  possession  of 
the  throne  of  Spain.     Meanwhile  some  of  his  men 

67 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

found  two  Indian  canoes,  and  for  the  first  time  float- 
ed on  that  unknown  sea.  To  Balboa  and  his  com- 
panions it  was  but  a  new  avenue  of  conquest;  and 
Peter  Martyr  compares  him  to  Hannibal  showing 
Italy  to  his  soldiers  (ingentes  opes  sociis  pollicetur). 
But  to  us,  who  think  of  what  that  discovery  was,  it 
has  a  grandeur  second  only  to  the  moment  when  Co- 
lumbus saw  the  light  upon  the  shore.  Columbus  dis- 
covered what  he  thought  was  India,  but  Balboa 
proved  that  half  the  width  of  the  globe  still  separated 
him  from  India.  Columbus  discovered  a  new  land, 
but  Balboa  a  new  sea.  Seven  years  later  (1520), 
Magellan  also  reached  it  by  sailing  southward  and 
passing  through  the  straits  that  bear  his  name,  giv- 
ing to  the  great  ocean  the  name  of  Pacific,  from  the 
serene  weather  which  met  him  on  his  voyage. 

I  must  not  omit  to  mention  one  who  was  the  first 
European  visitor  of  Florida,  except  as  Vespucci  and 
others  had  traced  the  outline  of  its  shores.  Yet 
Ponce  de  Leon  made  himself  immortal,  not,  like  Co- 
lumbus, by  what  he  dreamed  and  discovered,  but  by 
what  he  dreamed  and  never  found.  Even  to  have 
gone  in  search  of  the  Fountain  of  Youth  was  an 
event  that  so  arrested  the  human  imagination  as  to 
have  thrown  a  sort  of  halo  around  a  man  who  cer- 
tainly never  reached  that  goal.  The  story  was  first 
heard  among  the  Indians  of  Cuba  and  Hispaniola, 
that  on  the  island  of  Bimini,  one  of  the  Lucayos, 
there  was  a  fountain  in  which  aged  men  by  bathing 
could  renew  their  youth.  The  old  English  transla- 
tion of  Peter  Martyr  describes  this  island  as  one  "in 
the  which  there  is  a  continual  spring  of  running 
water  of  such  marvellous  virtue  that,  the  water  there- 
of being  drunk,  perhaps  with  some  diet,  maketh  old 

68 


THE    SPANISH    DISCOVERERS 

men  young."  Others  added  that  on  a  neighboring 
shore  there  was  a  river  of  the  same  magical  powers — 
a  river  believed  by  many  to  be  the  Jordan.  With  these 
visions  in  his  mind,  Ponce  de  Leon,  sailing  in  command 
of  three  brigantines  from  Porto  Rico,  where  he  had 
been  Governor,  touched  the  main-land,  in  the  year 
15 12,  without  knowing  that  he  had  arrived  at  it. 
First  seeing  it  on  Easter  Sunday — a  day  which  the 
Spaniards  called  Pascua  Florida,  or  "  Flowery  Easter" 
— he  gave  this  name  to  the  newly  discovered  shore. 
He  fancied  it  to  be  an  island  whose  luxuriant  beauty 
seemed  to  merit  this  glowing  name — the  Indian  name 
having  been  Cantio.  He  explored  its  coast,  landed 
near  what  is  now  St.  Augustine,  then  returned  home, 
and  on  the  way  delegated  one  of  his  captains,  Juan 
Perez,  to  seek  the  island  of  Bimini  and  to  search  for 
the  Fountain  of  Youth  upon  it.  Perez  reached  the 
island,  but  achieved  nothing  more. 

Long  after  these  days,  Herrera  tells  us,  both  Ind- 
ians and  Spaniards  used  to  bathe  themselves  in  the 
rivers  and  lakes  of  all  that  region,  hoping  to  find  the 
enchanted  waters.  Ponce  de  Leon  once  again  visit- 
ed his  supposed  island,  and  was  mortally  wounded 
by  Indians  on  its  shores.  He  never  found  the  Foun- 
tain of  Youth,  but  he  found  Florida;  and  for  the 
multitudes  who  now  retreat  from  the  northern  win- 
ter to  that  blossoming  region,  it  may  seem  that  his 
early  dreams  were  not  so  unfounded  after  all. 

The  conquest  of  Mexico  by  Cortez  revived  anew  the 
zeal  of  Spanish  adventure,  and  a  new  expedition  to 
Florida  was  organized  which  led  ultimately  to  a  new 
discovery — that  of  the  first  land  route  across  the 
width,  though  not  across  the  largest  width,  of  North 
America.     Alvar  Nunez,  commonly  called  Cabeca  de 

69 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Vaca,  sailed  from  Spain  to  Florida,  in  1527,  as  treas- 
urer of  an  armada,  or  armed  fleet.  They  probably 
landed  at  what  is  now  called  Charlotte  Harbor,  in 
Florida,  where  Cabeca  de  Vaca  and  others  left  their 
ships  and  went  into  the  interior  as  far  as  what  is  now 
Alabama.  Then  they  were  driven  back  in  confu- 
sion, and  reached  the  sea  in  utter  destitution  and 
helplessness.  They  wished  to  build  ships  and  to  get 
away ;  but  they  had  neither  knowledge  nor  tools  nor 
iron  nor  forge  nor  tow  nor  resin  nor  rigging.  Yet 
they  made  a  bellows  out  of  deer-skins,  and  saws  out 
of  stirrups,  resin  from  pine-trees,  sails  from  their 
shirts,  and  ropes  from  palmetto  leaves  and  from  the 
hair  of  their  horses'  tails.  Out  of  the  skins  of  the 
legs  of  horses,  taken  off  whole  and  tanned,  they 
made  bottles  to  carry  water.  At  last  they  made  three 
boats,  living  on  horse-meat  until  these  were  ready. 
Then  they  set  sail,  were  shipwrecked  again  and  again, 
went  through  all  sorts  of  sorrows,  lived  on  half  a 
handful  of  raw  maize  a  day  for  each  person,  and  were 
so  exhausted  that  at  one  time  all  but  Cabeca  de  Vaca 
became  unconscious,  and  were  restored  to  life  by 
being  thrown  into  the  water  on  the  capsizing  of  the 
boat — a  tale  which,  it  is  thought,  may  have  suggested 
to  Coleridge  his  picture  of  the  dead  sailors  coming  to 
life  in  the  "Ancient  Mariner." 

During  this  voyage  of  thirty  days  along  the  coast 
they  passed  a  place  where  a  great  fresh-water  river 
ran  into  the  sea,  and  they  dipped  up  fresh  water  to 
drink;  this  has  been  supposed  to  be  the  Mississippi, 
and  this  to  have  been  its  first  discovery  by  white  men. 
Cabeca  de  Vaca  must  at  any  rate  have  reached  the 
Lower  Mississippi  before  De  Soto,  and  have  pene- 
trated the  northern  part  of  Mexico  before  Cortez,  for 

7o 


THE    SPANISH    DISCOVERERS 

he  traversed  the  continent;  and  after  eight  years  of 
wandering,  during  which  he  saw  many  novel  won- 
ders, including  the  buffalo,  he  found  himself  with 
three  surviving  companions  at  the  Spanish  settle- 
ments on  the  Gulf  of  California,  near  the  river  Culia- 
can.  The  narrative  of  Cabeca  de  Vaca  has  been 
translated  in  full  by  Buckingham  Smith,  and  no  sin- 
gle account  of  Spanish  adventure  combines  so  many 
amazing  incidents.  His  pictures  of  the  country  trav- 
ersed are  generally  accurate  and  complete,  and  he 
had  almost  every  conceivable  experience  with  the 
Indians.  He  was  a  slave  to  tribes  which  kept  white 
captives  in  the  most  abject  bondage,  and  every  day 
put  arrows  to  their  breasts  by  way  of  threat  for  the 
morrow.  And  he  encountered  other  tribes  which 
brought  all  their  food  to  the  white  men  to  be  breathed 
upon  before  they  ate  it;  tribes  which  accompanied 
their  visitors  by  thousands  as  a  guard  of  honor  in 
their  march  through  the  country;  and  tribes  where 
the  people  fetched  all  the  goods  from  their  houses, 
and  laid  them  before  the  strangers  passing  by,  pray- 
ing them,  as  visitors  from  heaven,  to  accept  their 
choicest  possessions.  Yet  all  these  tales  are  com- 
bined with  descriptions  so  minute  and  occurrences  so 
probable  that  the  main  narrative  must  be  accepted 
for  truth,  though  it  is  impossible  to  tell  precisely 
where  belief  should  begin  or  end. 

Such  were  some  of  the  early  Spanish  discoveries. 
I  pass  by  the  romantic  adventures  of  Cortez  and 
Pizarro;  they  were  not  discoveries,  but  rather  con- 
quests, and  their  conquests  lay  almost  wholly  be- 
yond the  borders  of  the  region  now  known  as  the 
United  States  of  America.  There  is  nothing  more 
picturesque  in  the  early  history  of  any  country  than 

7i 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  period  of  Spanish  adventure;  nor  is  there  any- 
thing sadder  than  the  reverse  of  the  picture,  when 
we  consider  the  wrongs  endured  by  the  native  popu- 
lation. Those  gentle  races  whom  Columbus  found 
so  hospitable  and  so  harmless  were  soon  crushed  by 
the  invaders,  and  the  more  powerful  tribes  of  the 
main-land  fared  no  better.  Weapons,  tortures,  fire, 
and  even  blood-hounds  fiercer  than  wild  beasts  were 
used  against  them.  Spanish  writers  delight  to  de- 
scribe the  scars  and  wounds  of  these  powerful  ani- 
mals, some  of  which  were  so  highly  esteemed  as  to 
be  rated  as  soldiers  under  their  own  names,  receiv- 
ing their  full  allowance  of  food  as  such,  the  brute 
being  almost  as  cruel  and  formidable  as  a  man.  For 
the  credit  of  civilization  and  Christianity  it  is  to  be 
remembered  that  the  same  nation  and  faith  which 
furnished  the  persecutors  supplied  also  the  defenders 
and  the  narrators ;  and  most  of  what  we  know  of  the 
wrongs  of  the  natives  comes  through  the  protests, 
not  always  unavailing,  of  the  noble  Las  Casas.  This 
good  bishop  unceasingly  urged  upon  the  Spanish  rulers 
a  policy  of  mercy.  He  secured  milder  laws,  and,  as 
bishop,  even  refused  the  sacraments  at  one  time  to 
those  who  reduced  the  Indians  to  slavery.  But  it 
was  soon  plain  that  to  carry  out  this  policy  would  be 
practically  to  abolish  the  sacraments,  and  so  neither 
Church  nor  State  sustained  him.  He  has  left  us  the 
imperishable  record  of  the  atrocities  he  could  not 
repress.  "With  mine  own  eyes,"  he  says,  "I  saw 
kingdoms  as  full  of  people  as  hives  are  of  bees,  'and 
now  where  are  they?  .  .  .  Almost  all  have  perished. 
The  innocent  blood  which  they  had  shed  cried  out 
for  vengeance;  the  sighs,  the  tears,  of  so  many  vic- 
tims went  up  to  God." 

72 


IV 
THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

PROBABLY  no  single  class  of  men  ever  made  a 
greater  change  in  the  fortunes  of  mankind  than 
was  brought  about  by  the  great  English  seamen  of 
the  sixteenth  century.     Some  of  them  were  slave- 
traders,  others  were  smugglers,  almost  all  were  law- 
less men  in  a  lawless  age ;  but  the  result  of  their  daring 
expeditions  was  to  alter  the  destiny  of  the  American 
continent,  and  therefore  the  career  of  the  human  race. 
In  the  year  1500   Spain,  with  Portugal,  was  the 
undisputed  master  of  the  New  World.     At  the  pres- 
ent time  neither  Spain  nor  Portugal  owns  a  foot  of 
land  in  either  North  or  South  America.     The  des- 
tiny of  the  whole  western  world  has  been  changed ; 
and  throughout  almost  all  the  northern  half  of  it  the 
language,  the  institutions,  the  habits  have  been  ut- 
terly transformed.     At  the  time  when  Europe  was 
first  stirred  by  the  gold  and  the  glory  brought  from 
the  newly  discovered  America,  it  was  only  Spain,  and 
in  a  small  degree  Portugal,  that  reaped  the  harvest. 
These  were  then  the  two  great  maritime  and  coloniz- 
ing powers  of  Europe ;  and  two  bulls  from  Pope  Alex- 
ander VI.,  in  1493,  had  permitted  them  to  divide  be- 
tween them  any  newly  discovered  portions  of  the 
globe.     Under  this   authority   Portugal  was  finally 
permitted  to  keep  Brazil— which  had  been  first  col- 

73 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

onized  by  Portuguese — while  Spain  claimed  all  the 
rest  of  the  continent.  To  this  day  the  results  of 
that  mutual  distribution  are  plainly  to  be  seen  in 
South  America.  Brazil  speaks  Portuguese,  while  al- 
most all  the  rest  of  South  America,  with  Mexico, 
speaks  Spanish.  But  beyond  Mexico,  through  all 
the  vast  length  and  breadth  of  North  America,  save 
in  the  Province  of  Quebec,  English  is  the  prevailing 
and  official  language.  Throughout  that  region,  in- 
stead of  the  Latin  race  the  Germanic  prevails;  in- 
stead of  the  Roman  Catholic  faith  the  Protestant 
preponderates.  There  has  not  been  in  the  history 
of  the  world  a  profounder  change  in  the  current  of 
human  events.  The  most  remarkable  circumstance 
of  all  is,  that  this  change  was  substantially  made  in  a 
single  century  (the  sixteenth),  and  was  made  mainly 
through  a  single  class  of  men— the  old  English  sea- 
men. They  it  was  who  broke  the  power  of  Spain, 
and  changed  the  future  destinies  of  America. 

Other  nations  doubtless  co-operated.  Italy,  es- 
pecially, contained  the  great  intellectual  and  culti- 
vated race  in  that  age,  and  furnished  both  Spain  and 
Portugal  again  and  again  with  ships,  mathematical 
instruments,  captains,  crews,  and  even  bankers' 
credits.  Spain  sent  across  the  Atlantic  ocean  Colum- 
bus and  Amerigo  Vespucci,  both  Italians;  France 
sent  Verrazzano,  an  Italian;  England  sent  Cabot,  an 
Italian  by  citizenship  and  probably  by  birth  and 
blood.  For  centuries  the  descendants  of  the  North- 
men confined  their  voyages  to  the  shores  of  western 
Europe ;  they  knew  less  even  of  the  Mediterranean  than 
their  Viking  ancestors ;  but  London  had  Italian  mer- 
chants, and  Bristol  had  Italian  sailors,  and  it  is  to 
these  that  we  owe  the  pioneer  explorations  of  the 

74 


THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

Cabots.  We  must  begin  with  these,  for  on  these 
rested,  in  the  first  place,  all  the  claims  of  England  to 
the  North  American  coast. 

There  is  a  great  contrast  between  the  considerable 
knowledge  that  we  have  about  the  career  of  Colum- 
bus and  the  scanty  and  contradictory  information  left 
to  us  in  regard  to  the  Cabots.     There  is  scarcely  a 
fact  about  them  or  their  voyages  which  is  known 
with   complete    accuracy.     We    do    not   know    past 
question  their  nationality  or  their  birthdays,  or  the 
dates  of  their  voyages;  nor  do  we  always  know  by 
which   of  the  family  those  expeditions  were  made. 
John  Cabot  was  a  Genoese  who  came  to  England  to 
reside.     Sebastian  Cabot  is  now  pretty  well  known 
to  have  been  born  in  Bristol.     He  received  a  patent 
from  the  King  in  1496 — he  and  his  father  and  broth- 
ers—to make  discoveries ;  but  the  only  engraved  map 
bearing  his  name  claims  that  he  had  already  found 
North  America  two  years  before  that  date.     "John 
Cabot,  a  Venetian,  and  Sebastian  Cabot,  his  son,  dis- 
covered this  region,  formerly  unknown,  in  the  year 
1494,  on  the  24th  day  of  June,  at  the  fifth  hour." 
This  date  appears  both  in  the  Latin  and  Spanish  in- 
scriptions on  the  unique  copy  of  this  map  in  the 
National   Library   at   Paris,    the   map   itself  having 
been  engraved  in   1544,   "but  only  having  come  to 
light  in  1843.     Its  authenticity  has  been  fully  dis- 
cussed by  M.  D'Avezac,  who  believes  in  it,  and  by 
Dr.  J.  G.   Kohl  and  Charles  Deane,  who  reject  it. 
R.  H.  Major,  of  the  British  Museum,  has  made  the 
ingenious  suggestion  that  the  date,  which  is  in  Ro- 
man letters,  was  originally  written  by  Cabot  thus, 
MCCCCXCVIL,  and  that  the  V,  being  carelessly  writ- 
ten,  passed  for  II.,   so   that  the  transcriber  wrote 

75 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

1494  instead  of  1497.  To  add  to  the  confusion,  there 
is  evidence  in  the  Spanish  State  papers  that  would, 
if  credited,  carry  back  the  first  voyages  of  the  Cabots 
to  an  earlier  date  than  even  that  of  Columbus.  The 
Spanish  envoy  in  England  wrote  to  the  sovereigns 
Ferdinand  and  Isabella  (July  25,  1498),  that  the 
people  of  Bristol  had  been  annually  sending  ships 
for  seven  years  "in  search  of  the  island  Brazil  and 
the  seven  cities,  according  to  the  fancy  of  that  Italian 
Cabot."  This  would  imply  that  his  first  expedition 
took  place  in  1491. 

But  it  is  quite  certain  that  this  carries  back  the 
date  too  far;  it  is  almost  certain,  also,  that  it  was  the 
example  of  Columbus  which  aroused  Sebastian  Cabot 
to  action.  In  one  of  the  few  sentences  positively 
attributed  to  him,  though  by  an  unknown  witness, 
he  says  of  the  first  voyage  of  Columbus :  ' '  In  that 
time  when  news  was  brought  that  Don  Christopher 
Colonus,  Genoese,  had  discovered  the  coasts  of  In- 
dies, whereof  was  great  talk  in  all  the  court  of  King 
Henry  VII.,  who  then  reigned,  insomuch  that  all 
men,  with  great  admiration,  affirmed  it  to  be  a  thing 
more  divine  than  human  to  sail  by  the  West  unto 
the  East,  where  spices  grow,  by  a  way  that  was  never 
known  before ;  by  this  fame  and  report  there  increased 
in  my  heart  a  great  flame  of  desire  to  attempt  some 
notable  thing;  and  understanding  by  the  sphere 
(globe)  that  if  I  should  sail  by  way  of  the  northwest 
I  should  by  a  shorter  track  come  into  India,  I  im- 
parted my  ideas  to  the  King." 

It  is  not  improbable  that  the  map  of  Sebastian 
Cabot  gives  us  an  authentic  basis  of  knowledge  in 
regard  to  the  points  visited  by  him,  even  if  the  date 
assigned    is    not    quite    trustworthy.     His    "Prima 

76 


THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

Vista,"  or  point  first  seen — what  sailors  call  landfall 
— was  in  that  case  Cape  Breton.  He  sailed  along 
Prince  Edward  Island,  then  known  as  the  Isle  of  St. 
John,  and  along  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence,  perhaps 
beyond  the  site  where  Quebec  now  stands.  He  then 
sailed  eastward  to  Newfoundland,  which  he  described 
as  consisting  of  many  islands;  then  southward  per- 


"  Sebastian  Cabot,  Captain  and  Pilot  Major  of  his  Sacred  Im- 
perial Majesty,  the  Emperor  Don  Carlos  the  5th  of  his  name,  and 
King  our  Lord,  made  this  figure  extended  in  plane  in  the  year  of 
the  birth  of  our  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  1544-" 


haps  to  the  Chesapeake  River,  and  then  homeward. 
He  saw  first  the  bleakest  and  most  rugged  part  of 
the  North  American  coast. 

77 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

At  any  rate,  it  is  probable  that  in  1497  Sebastian 
Cabot  and  his  father  sailed  with  five  ships,  furnished 
at  their  own  cost,  but  upon  the  condition  that  they 
should  pay  the  King  one-fifth  of  all  profits.  They 
were  authorized  by  the  King  to  sail  "to  all  parts, 
countries,  and  seas  of  the  East,  of  the  West,  and  of 
the  North,  under  our  banners  and  ensigns  .  .  .  upon 
their  own  proper  costs  and  charges,  to  seek  out,  dis- 
cover, and  find  whatsoever  Isles,  Countries,  Regions, 
or  Provinces  of  the  Heathen  and  Infidels  whatsoever 
they  be,  and  in  whatsoever  part  of  the  world,  which 
before  this  time  have  been  unknown  to  Christians." 
They  were  also  permitted,  in  the  royal  phrase,  "to 
set  up  our  banners  and  ensigns  in  every  village,  town, 
castle,  isle,  or  main-land  of  them  newly  found,  and  to 
subdue,  occupy,  and  possess  them."  In  addition  to 
all  other  uncertainties,  the  authorities  differ  greatly 
as  to  whether  it  was  John  or  Sebastian  who  should 
have  the  honor  of  the  great  discoveries  made  by  this 
expedition.  Hakluyt,  who  compiled  the  well-known 
collection  of  voyages,  and  who  was  born  a  few  years 
before  Sebastian  Cabot's  death,  and  was  the  best-in- 
formed Englishman  of  his  time  as  to  nautical  mat- 
ters, declares  that  "a  great  part  of  this  continent  as 
well  as  of  the  islands  was  first  discovered  for  the  King 
of  England  by  Sebastian  Gabote,  an  Englishman, 
born  in  Bristow,  son  of  John  Gabote,  in  1496."  Else- 
where he  says:  "Columbus  first  saw  the  firme  land 
August  1,  1498,  but  Gabote  made  his  great  discovery 
in  1496."  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  an  entry  in 
the  Milan  archives  (August,  1497):  "Some  months 
ago  his  Majesty  Henry  VII.  sent  out  a  Venetian,  who 
is  a  very  good  mariner,  has  good  skill  in  discovering 
new  islands,  and  he  has  returned  safe,  and  has  found 

78 


THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

two  very  large  and  fertile  new  islands,  having  like- 
wise discovered  the  seven  cities,  400  leagues  from 
England,  on  the  western  passage."  This  names 
neither  John  nor  Sebastian.  But  there  is  another 
letter  in  the  Milan  archives,  from  Lorenzo  Pasqualigo 
to  his  brother  (dated  August  23,  1497),  which  might 
seem  to  settle  the  matter: 


"This  Venetian  of  ours,  who  went  with  a  ship  from  Bristol 
in  quest  of  new  islands,  is  returned,  and  says  that  seven 
hundred  leagues  hence  he  discovered  'terra  firma,'  which  is 
the  territory  of  the  Grand  Cham.  He  coasted  for  three 
hundred  leagues,  and  landed.  He  saw  no  human  being 
whatsoever;  but  he  has  brought  hither  to  the  King  certain 
snares  which  had  been  set  to  catch  game,  and  a  needle  for 
making  nets;  he  also  found  some  felled  trees;  wherefore  he 
supposed  there  were  inhabitants,  and  returned  to  his  ship  in 
alarm. 

"He  was  three  months  on  the  voyage,  it  is  quite  certain; 
and  coming  back,  he  saw  two  islands  to  starboard,  but  would 
not  land,  time  being  precious,  as  he  was  short  of  provisions. 
The  King  is  much  pleased  with  this  intelligence.  He  says 
that  the  tides  are  slack,  and  do  not  flow  as  they  do  here. 
The  King  has  promised  that  in  the  spring  he  shall  have  ten 
ships,  armed  according  to  his  own  fancy;  and  at  his  request 
he  has  conceded  to  him  all  the  prisoners,  except  such  as  are 
confined  for  high-treason,  to  man  them  with.  He  has  also 
given  him  money  wherewith  to  amuse  himself  till  then; 
and  he  is  now  at  Bristol  with  his  wife,  who  is  a  Vene- 
tian woman,  and  with  his  sons.  His  name  is  Zuan  Cabot, 
and  they  call  him  the  great  admiral.  Vast  honor  is  paid 
him,  and  he  dresses  in  silk;  and  these  English  run  after 
him  like  mad  people,  so  that  he  can  enlist  as  many  of 
them  as  he  pleases,  and  a  number  of  our  own  rogues  be- 
sides. 

"The  discoverer  of  these  places  planted  on  his  new-found 
land  a  large  cross,  with  one  flag  of  England,  and  another  of 
St.  Mark,  by  reason  of  his  being  a  Venetian,  so  that  our 
banner  has  floated  very  far  afield." 

79 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

But  the  librarian  of  the  Bristol  public  library,  Mr. 
Nicholls,  in  his  biography  of  Sebastian  Cabot,  points 
out  that  we  have  among  the  privy  purse  expenses 
of  Henry  VII.  some  entries  that  quite  change  this 
story.  We  have  there  recorded  the  very  sum  paid 
to  John  Cabot  (August  10,  1497):  "To  him  who 
found  the  new  isle,  £10."  Fifty  dollars  was  certainly 
a  moderate  price  to  pay  for  the  whole  continent  of 
North  America,  and  certainly  not  sufficient  to  keep 
"the  great  admiral"  and  his  Venetian  wife  in  silk 
dresses  from  August  to  the  following  spring.  This 
evident  exaggeration  throws  some  doubt  over  the 
whole  tone  of  Signor  Pasqualigo's  narrative;  yet  it 
leaves  the  main  facts  untouched.  The  most  prob- 
able explanation  of  the  whole  contradiction  is  thought 
to  be  that  John  Cabot,  the  father,  was  the  leader  in 
the  "great  voyage,"  and  won  most  fame  at  the  time, 
but  that  his  death,  which  happened  soon  after,  left 
his  son  Sebastian  in  possession  of  the  field,  after  which 
time  Sebastian's  later  voyages  gave  most  of  the  laurels 
to  his  name.  At  any  rate,  they  belonged  to  the  name 
of  Cabot,  and  this  will  probably  always  rank  next  to 
that  of  Columbus  in  popular  renown. 

A  patent  for  another  voyage  was  granted  to  John 
Cabot  in  1498,  and  was  used,  though  some  doubt 
still  exists  about  the  leadership  of  this  expedition. 
Cabot  went  expressly,  Gomara  says,  "to  know 
what  manner  of  lands  these  Indies  were  to  inhabit." 
The  King's  privy  purse  account  shows  that  bounties 
were  given  to  those  who  enlisted  under  Cabot. 
"A  reward  of  £2  to  Jas.  Carter  for  going  to  the 
new  Isle,  also  to  Thos.  Bradley  and  Launcelot  Thir- 
kill,  going  to  the  new  Isle  £30."  It  would  be  curious 
to  know  if  these  sums  represent  the  comparative 

80 


THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

value  of  the  recruits ;  at  any  rate,  besides  two  pounds' 
worth  of  Carters  and  thirty  pounds'  worth  of  Brad- 
leys  and  Thirkills — these  being  respectable  mer- 
chants— Cabot  had  a  liberal  supply  of  men  upon 
whose  heads  no  bounty  was  set,  unless  to  pay  him 
for  removing  them.  Perkin  Warbeck's  insurrection 
had  lately  been  suppressed,  and  had  filled  the  jails; 
and  the  Venetian  calendar  tells  us  that  "the  King 
gave  Cabot  the  sweepings  of  the  prisons."  It  was 
poor  material  out  of  which  to  make  colonists,  as 
Captain  John  Smith  discovered  more  than  a  century 
later. 

What  with  jail-birds  and  others,  Cabot  took  with 
him  in  1498  three  hundred  men,  and  sailed  past  Ice- 
land, or  Island,  as  it  was  then  called,  a  region  well 
known  to  Bristol  (or  Bristow)  men,  and  not  likely  to 
frighten  his  rather  untrustworthy  ship's  company. 
Then  he  sailed  for  Labrador,  which  he  called  "La 
Tierra  de  los  Baccalaos,"  or  briefly,  "The  Baccalaos" 
— this  word  meaning  simply  cod-fish.  He  said  that 
he  found  such  abundance  of  this  fish  as  to  hinder  the 
sailing  of  his  ships ;  that  he  found  seals  and  salmon 
abundant  in  the  rivers  and  bays,  and  bears  which 
plunged  into  the  water  and  caught  these  fish.  ^  He 
described  herds  of  reindeer,  and  men  like  Eskimo, 
but  he  could  find  no  passage  to  India  among  the 
"islands."  This  is  what  they  were  habitually  called 
in  those  days,  though  the  King  more  guardedly  de- 
scribed the  new  region  in  his  patent  as  "the  said 
Londe  [land]  or  Isles."  Cabot  left  some  colonists  on 
the  bleak  shores  of  Labrador  or  Newfoundland,  then 
returned  and  took  the  poor  fellows  on  board  again; 
he  sailed  south,  following  the  coast  perhaps  as  far 
as  Florida,  but  not  a  man  would  go  ashore  to  found 
6  81 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

another  colony,  and  he  returned  to  England  with  in- 
creased fame  but  little  profit.  Later  he  explored 
Hudson  Bay,  looking  vainly  for  a  passage  westward, 
while  the  King  was  still  giving  bounties  to  those  who 
went  to  "the  new  island,"  or  sometimes  to  "the 
Newfounded  island,"  which  shows  how  easily  the 
name  Newfoundland  came  to  be  fixed  upon  one  part 
of  the  region  explored.  The  date  of  the  return  of 
the  expedition  is  not  recorded,  and  it  has  been 
thought  that  John  Cabot  died  on  the  voyage. 

The  Cabots  were  certainly  in  one  sense  the  dis- 
coverers of  America :  it  was  they  who  first  made  sure 
that  it  was  a  wholly  new  and  unknown  continent. 
In  his  early  voyages  John  Cabot  had  no  doubt  that 
he  had  visited  India,  but  after  the  voyage  of  1498 
Sebastian  Cabot  expressed  openly  his  disappoint- 
ment that  a  "  New  Found  Land"  of  most  inhospitable 
aspect  lay  as  a  barrier  between  Europe  and  the 
desired  Asia.  As  the  German  writer,  Dr.  Asher,  has 
well  said,  "Cabot's  displeasure  involves  the  scientific 
discovery  of  a  new  world."  In  Sebastian's  charts 
North  America  stands  as  a  separate  and  continuous 
continent,  though  long  after  his  time  the  separate 
islands  were  delineated,  as  of  old,  by  others,  and 
all  were  still  supposed  to  be  outlying  parts  of  Asia. 
In  this,  as  in  other  respects,  Cabot  was  better  ap- 
preciated fifty  years  later  than  in  his  own  day. 
His  truthful  accounts  for  the  time  discouraged 
further  enterprise  in  the  same  direction.  "They 
that  seek  riches,"  said  Peter  Martyr,  "must  not  go  to 
the  frozen  North."  And  after  one  or  two  ineffectual 
undertakings  he  found  no  encouragement  to  repeat  his 
voyages  to  the  North  American  coast,  but  was  said  to 
have  been  sought  for  by  both  Spain  and  England  to 

82 


THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

conduct  other  enterprises.     He  was  employed  in  or- 
ganizing expeditions  to  the  Brazils,  or  to  the  north 
pole  by  way  of  Russia,  but  the  continent  he  had  dis- 
covered was  left  unexplored.     He  wa£  esteemed  as  a 
skilful  mariner  and  one  who  had  held  high  official 
station;  he  died  dreaming  of  a  new  and  infallible 
mode  of  discovering  the  longitude  which  he  thought 
had  been  revealed  to  him  from  Heaven,  and  which 
he  must  not  disclose.    The  date  of  his  death,  like  that 
of  his  birth,  is  unknown,  and  his  burial-place  is  for- 
gotten.    But  fifty  years  later,  when  Englishmen  turn- 
ed again  for  a  different  object  towards  the  American 
continent,  they  remembered  these  early  achievements 
and  based  on  them  a  claim  of  ownership  by  right  of 
discovery.     Even   then   they  were   so   little   appre- 
ciated that  Lord  Bacon,  writing  his  Reign  of  Henry 
VII.,  gives  but  three  or  four  sentences  to  the  ex- 
plorations which  perhaps  exceed  in  real  importance 
all  else  that  happened  under  that  reign. 

For  about  half  a  century  the  English  seamen  hard- 
ly crossed  the  Atlantic.  When  they  began  again  it 
was  because  they  had  learned  from  Spain  to  engage 
in  the  slave-trade.  In  that  base  path  the  maritime 
glory  of  England  found  its  revival.  For  fifty  years 
Englishmen  thought  of  the  New  World  only  as  a 
possession  of  Spain,  with  which  England  was  m  more 
or  less  friendly  alliance.  It  was  France,  not  Eng- 
land, which  showed  at  that  time  some  symptoms  of 
a  wish  to  dispute  the  rich  possession  with  Spam ;  and 
after  the  vovage  of  Verrazzano,  in  1521,  the  name 
New  France  covered  much  of  North  America  on  cer- 
tain maps  and  globes.  It  was  little  more  than  a 
name;  but  the  Breton  and  Gascon  fishermen  began 
to  make  trips  to  the  West  Indies,  mingling  more  or 

83 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

less  of  smuggling  and  piracy  with  their  avowed  pur- 
suit, and  the  English  followed  them — learned  the  way 
of  them,  in  fact.  Under  the  sway  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth, England  was  again  Protestant,  not  Catholic; 
the  bigotry  of  Philip  II.  had  aroused  all  the  Protes- 
tant nations  against  him,  and  the  hereditary  hostil- 
ity of  France  made  the  French  sailors  only  too  ready 
to  act  as  pilots  and  seamen  for  the  English.  Between 
the  two  the  most  powerful  band  of  buccaneers  and 
adventurers  in  the  world  was  soon  let  loose  upon  the 
Spanish  settlements. 

It  is  a  melancholy  fact  that  the  voyage  which  first 
opened  the  West  Indian  seas  to  the  English  ships  was 
a  slave-trading  voyage.  The  discreditable  promise 
made  by  Columbus  that  America  should  supply 
Europe  with  slaves  had  not  been  fulfilled;  on  the 
contrary,  the  demand  for  slaves  in  the  Spanish  mines 
and  the  Portuguese  plantations  was  greater  than 
America  could  supply,  and  it  was  necessary  to  look 
across  the  Atlantic  for  it.  John  Hawkins,  an  ex- 
perienced seaman,  whose  father  had  been  a  Guinea 
trader  before  him,  took  a  cargo  of  slaves  from  Guinea 
in  1562,  and  sold  them  in  the  ports  of  Hispaniola. 
"Worshipful  friends  in  London,"  it  appears,  shared 
his  venture — Sir  Lionel  Ducket,  Sir  Thomas  Lodge, 
and  the  like.  He  took  three  ships,  the  largest  only  one 
hundred  and  twenty  tons ;  he  had  but  a  hundred  men 
in  all.  In  Guinea,  Hakluyt  frankly  tells  us  in  the  brief 
note  which  gives  all  that  is  known  of  this  expedition, 
V  he  got  into  his  possession,  partly  by  the  sword  and 
partly  by  other  meanes,  to  the  number  of  three  hun- 
dred negroes  at  the  least,  besides  other  merchandises 
which  that  country  yeeldeth."  With  this  miserable 
cargo  he  sailed  for  Hispaniola,  and  in  three  ports  left 

84 


THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

all  his  goods  behind  him,  loaded  his  own  ship  with 
hides,  ginger,  sugar,  and  pearls,  and  had  enough  to 
freight  two  other  ships  besides.  This  is  almost  all 
we  know  of  the  first  voyage;  but  the  second,  in  1564, 
was  fully  described  by  John  Sparke,  one  of  his  com- 
panions— and  a  very  racy  record  it  is.  This  was  the 
first  English  narrative  of  American  adventure;  for 
though  Cabot  left  manuscripts  behind  him,  they  were 
not  printed. 

When  we  consider  that  the  slave-trade  is  now 
treated  as  piracy  throughout  the  civilized  world,  it 
is  curious  to  find  that  these  courageous  early  naviga- 
tors were  not  only  slave-traders,  but  of  a  most  pious 
description.  When  Hawkins  tried  to  capture  and 
enslave  a  whole  town  near  Sierra  Leone,  and  when 
he  narrowly  escaped  being  captured  himself  and  meet- 
ing the  fate  he  richly  deserved,  his  historian  says, 
11  God,  who  worketh  all  things  for  the  best,  would  not 
have  it  so,  and  by  Him  wee  escaped  without  danger ; 
His  name  be  praysed  for  it."  When  the  little  fleet 
is  becalmed,  and  suffers  for  want  of  water,  the  author 
says,  "But  Almightie  God,  who  never  suffereth  His 
elect  to  perish,  sent  vs  the  sixteene  of  Februarie 
the  ordinarie  Brieze,  which  is  the  northwest  winde." 
With  these  religious  sentiments  Hawkins  carried  his 
negroes  to  the  Spanish  settlements  in  Venezuela  and 
elsewhere.  The  news  of  his  former  voyage  had 
reached  Philip  of  Spain,  who  had  expressly  prohibited 
the  colonists  from  trading  with  Hawkins.  But  they 
wished  for  his  slaves,  and  he  had  the  skill  to  begin 
his  traffic  by  explaining  that  he  only  wished  to  sell 
"certaine  lean  and  sicke  negroes,  which  he  had  in  his 
shippe,  like  to  die  upon  his  hands,"  but  which,  if 
taken  on  shore,  might  yet  recover.     It  was  thought 

85 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

that  it  might  be  a  kindness  to  the  poor  to  let  them 
buy  lean  negroes  at  a  low  price,  and  so  the  bargain 
was  permitted.  If  a  town  gave  him  a  license  to 
trade  in  slaves,  and  charged  money  for  it,  he  put  the 
prices  high  enough  to  cover  the  charges.  If  the 
prices  were  thought  too  high,  and  the  town  authorities 
objected,  he  would  go  on  shore  with  a  hundred  men 
in  armor,  and  "  hauing  in  his  great  boate  two  falcons 
of  brasse,  and  in  the  other  boates  double  bases  in 
their  noses  " ;  and  with  these  cannon  would  so  frighten 
the  people  that  they  would  send  the  town  treasurer 
to  negotiate.  The  treasurer  would  perhaps  come  on 
horseback,  with  a  javelin,  but  would  be  so  afraid  of 
the  captain  on  foot  with  his  armor  that  he  would  keep 
at  a  safe  distance,  and  do  the  bargaining  at  the  top 
of  his  voice. 

Hawkins  and  his  men  seem  to  have  feared  nothing 
seriously  except  the  alligators,  which  they  called  croc- 
odiles, and  of  which  they  asserted  that  they  drew 
people  to  them  by  their  lamentations.  "His  nature 
is  euer,  when  he  would  haue  his  praie,  to  crie  and 
sobbe  like  a  Christian  bodie  to  prouoke  them  to  come 
to  him,  and  then  he  snatcheth  at  them ;  and  thereupon 
came  this  prouerbe  that  is  applied  vnto  women  when 
they  weepe,  Lachrymce  Crocodili,  the  meaning  where- 
of is  that  as  the  crocodile  when  he  crieth  goeth  then 
about  most  to  deceive,  so  doth  a  woman  most  com- 
monly when  she  weepeth."  Shakespeare,  who  was 
about  this  time  writing  his  play  of  "  King  Henry  VI.," 
apparently  borrowed  from  Sir  John  Hawkins  this 
story,  and  introduced  it  in  his  lines: 

As  the  mournful  crocodile 
With  sorrow  snares  relenting  passengers." 

— 2    Henry    VI.,    iii.    I. 
86 


THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

Hawkins  and  his  men  visited  Cuba,  Hispaniola, 
the  Tortugas,  and  other  places;  supplied  food  to 
Laudonniere's  French  settlements  in  what  was  then 
called  Florida,  and  ultimately  sailed  along  the  coast 
of  North  America  to  Newfoundland,  and  thence  to 
Europe.  By  this  voyage  Hawkins  obtained  fame  and 
honor ;  he  became  Sir  John  Hawkins,  and  was  author- 
ized to  have  on  his  crest  the  half-length  figure  of  a 
negro  prisoner,  called  technically  "a  demie-Moor 
bound  and  captive."  Later,  when  Queen  Elizabeth 
had  definitely  taken  sides  against  Spain,  and  with- 
drawn all  obstacles  to  Hawkins's  plans,  he  estab- 
lished a  regular  settlement,  or  "factory,"  in  Guinea 
as  the  headquarters  for  his  slave-trade;  sailed  with 
slaves  once  more  for  a  third  voyage  across  the  At- 
lantic (1567) ;  traded  in  some  places  openly,  in  others 
secretly  and  by  night,  in  spite  of  King  Philip's  pro- 
hibition, and  prospered  well  until  he  met  in  the  port 
of  San  Juan  de  Ulloa  a  Spanish  fleet  stronger  than 
his  own.  Hawkins  had  already  put  into  the  port 
with  disabled  ships,  when  he  saw  a  fleet  of  thirteen 
Spanish  treasure-ships  outside.  He  might,  perhaps, 
have  kept  them  from  entering,  or  have  captured  or 
sunk  them,  had  he  dared;  but  he  let  them  in  with  a 
solemn  compact  of  mutual  forbearance,  was  then 
treacherously  attacked  by  the  Spaniards,  and  an  en- 
gagement was  brought  on.  The  English  were  at  first 
successful,  but  the  Spaniards  used  fire-ships  against 
them,  and  Hawkins  was  utterly  defeated.  Some  of 
his  vessels  were  sunk;  others  were  driven  to  sea  with- 
out provisions. 

Hawkins  himself  thus  plaintively  describes  their 
sorrows:  "With  manie  sorrowfull  hearts  wee  wan- 
dred  in  an  unknowen  Sea  by  the  space  of  fourteene 

87 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

dayes,  tyll  hunger  enforced  vs  to  seeke  the  lande,  for 
birdes  were  thought  very  good  meate,  rattes,  cattes, 
mise,  and  dogges,  none  escaped  that  might  be  gotten, 
parrotes  and  monkayes  that  were  had  in  great  prize 
were  thought  then  very  profitable  if  they  served  the 
tourne  [turn]  one  dinner."  A  poor  remnant  of  the 
crews  reached  England  at  last  in  a  condition  as  wretch- 
ed as  that  of  the  negroes  they  had  kidnapped;  and 
Hawkins  thus  sums  up  their  adventures:  "If  all  the 
miseries  and  troublesome  affaires  of  this  sorrowfull 
voyage  should  be  perfectly  and  thoroughly  written, 
there  should  need  a  paynfull  [painstaking]  man  with 
his  penne,  and  as  great  a  time  as  hee  had  that  wrote 
the  lives  and  deathes  of  the  martirs."  Nothing  is 
more  probable  than  that  Hawkins  regarded  himself 
as  entitled  to  a  place  upon  the  catalogue  of  saints. 
But  darkened  as  were  these  voyages  by  wrong  and 
by  disaster,  they  nevertheless  were  the  beginning  of 
the  long  sea-fight  between  Spain  and  England  for 
the  possession  of  the  New  World. 

The  contest  was  followed  up  by  the  greatest  of  the 
English  sailors,  Francis  Drake,  first  known  as  com- 
manding a  vessel  under  Hawkins  in  the  ill-fated  ex- 
pedition just  described.  From  the  time  of  that  dis- 
aster Drake  took  up  almost  as  a  profession  the  work 
of  plundering  the  Spaniards;  and  he  might  well  be 
called  a  buccaneer  had  he  not  concentrated  his  pi- 
racy on  one  particular  nation.  He  was  the  son  of  a 
Protestant  chaplain  who  had  suffered  for  his  opin- 
ions; and  though  the  policy  of  Elizabeth  was  long 
uncertain,  the  public  sentiment  of  England  was  with 
the  United  Netherlands  in  their  desperate  war  against 
Philip  II.  The  English  seamen  had  found  out  that 
the  way  to  reach  Spain  was  through  her  rich  pos- 

88 


THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

sessions  in  the  West  Indies  and  South  America,  or  by 
plundering  the  treasure-ships  to  which  she  could  af- 
ford but  meagre  escort.  Drake  made  one  trip  after 
another  to  the  American  coast,  and  on  February  n, 
1573,  he  looked  for  the  first  time  on  the  Pacific  from 
the  top  of  a  tree  in  Panama.  He  resolved  to  become 
the  pioneer  of  England  on  that  ocean,  where  the 
English  flag  had  never  yet  floated,  and  he  asked  the 
blessing  of  God  on  this  enterprise.  In  November, 
1577,  he  embarked  for  the  fulfilment  of  this  purpose, 
being  resolved  to  take  Peru  itself  from  the  Spaniards. 
His  enterprise  was  known  at  the  time  as  "the  fa- 
mous voyage,"  and  ended  in  the  first  English  cir- 
cumnavigation of  the  globe. 

Such  novels  as  Kingsley's  Westward  Ho!  or,  Sir 
Amyas  Leigh  give  a  picture,  hardly  exaggerated,  of 
the  exciting  achievements  of  these  early  seamen. 
Drake  sailed  from  Plymouth,  November  15,  1577, 
with  one  hundred  and  sixty-four  sailors  and  advent- 
urers in  a  fleet  of  five  ships  and  barks,  and  after 
making  some  captures  of  Spanish  vessels  about  the 
Cape  de  Verde  Islands,  he  steered  for  the  open  sea. 
He  was  fifty-four  days  out  of  sight  of  land— time 
enough  to  have  made  eight  ocean  voyages  in  a  Liver- 
pool steamer— before  he  came  in  sight  of  the  Brazils. 
There  he  cruised  awhile  and  victualled  his  ships  with 
seals,  which  are  not  now  considered  good  eating.  Fol- 
lowing down  the  coast  in  the  track  of  Magellan,  he 
reached  at  last  the  strait  which  bears  the  name  of 
this  Portuguese  explorer,  but  which  no  Englishman 
had  yet  traversed.  Drake's  object  was  to  come  by 
this  unexpected  ocean  route  to  Peru,  and  there 
ravage  the  Spanish  settlements. 

Reaching  the  coast  of  Chili,  he  heard  from  an  Ind- 

89 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

ian  in  a  canoe  that  there  was  a  great  Spanish  ship 
at  Santiago  laden  with  treasure  from  Peru.  Ap- 
proaching the  port,  the  Englishman  found  the  ship 
riding  at  anchor,  having  on  board  but  six  Spaniards 
and  three  negroes.  These  poor  fellows,  never  dream- 
ing that  any  but  their  own  countrymen  could  have 
found  their  way  there,  welcomed  the  visitors,  beating 
a  drum  in  their  honor,  and  setting  forth  a  jar  of 
Chilian  wine  for  their  entertainment.  But  as  soon 
as  the  strangers  entered,  one  of  them,  named  Thomas 
Moon,  began  to  lay  about  him  with  his  sword  in  a 
most  uncivil  manner,  striking  one  Spaniard,  and 
shouting,  "Go  down,  dog!"  (Abaxo,  perro!)  All  the 
Spaniards  and  negroes  were  at  once  driven  below, 
except  one,  who  jumped  overboard  and  alarmed  the 
town.  The  people  of  Santiago  fled  to  the  woods, 
and  the  Englishmen  landed  and  robbed  the  town,  in- 
cluding a  little  chapel,  from  which  they  took  "a  sil- 
ver chalice,  two  cruets,  and  one  altar-cloth,  the  spoyle 
whereof  our  Generall  gave  to  M.  Fletcher,  his  min- 
ister. "  On  board  the  captured  ship  they  found 
abundance  of  wine  and  treasure,  amounting  to  thirty- 
seven  thousand  ducats  of  Spanish  money — a  ducat 
being  worth  five  and  a  half  shillings  English. 

They  sailed  away,  leaving  their  prisoners  on  shore. 
Landing  at  Tarapaca,  they  found  a  Spaniard  lying 
asleep,  with  thirteen  bars  of  silver  beside  him,  these 
being  worth  four  thousand  ducats.  "We  tooke  the 
siluer,"  says  the  narrator,  briefly,  "  and  left  the  man." 
Landing  for  water  at  another  place,  they  met  a  Span- 
iard and  an  Indian  boy  driving  eight  "  Llamas  or 
sheepe  of  Peru,  which  are  as  bigge  as  asses"  ;  each  of 
these  having  two  bags  of  leather  on  his  back,  each  bag 
holding  fifty  pounds  of   fine   silver — eight    hundred 

90 


THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

pounds  weight  in  all.  Soon  after  they  captured  three 
small  barks,  one  of  them  laden  with  silver  and  another 
with  a  quantity  of  linen  cloth.  At  Lima  they  found 
twelve  ships  at  anchor,  robbed  them,  and  cut  their 
cables ;  and  afterwards  they  came  up  with  a  bark  yield- 
ing eighty  pounds  of  gold  and  a  crucifix  of  gold  and 
emeralds.  Everywhere  they  took  people  wholly  by 
surprise,  such  a  thing  as  an  English  ship  being  a 
sight  wholly  new  on  the  Pacific  Ocean,  altogether 
unexpected,  and  particularly  unwelcome. 

Everywhere  they  heard  of  a  great  Spanish  treas- 
ure-ship, the  Cacafuego,  which  had  sailed  before  their 
arrival;  they  followed  her  to  Payta  and  to  Panama, 
and  the  "General"  promised  his  chain  of  gold  to 
any  lookout  who  should  spy  her.  Coming  up  with  her 
at  last,  they  fired  three  shots,  striking  down  her  miz- 
zen-mast,  and  then  captured  her  without  resistance. 
They  found  in  her  "great  riches,  as  iewels,  and  pre- 
cious stones,  thirteene  chests  full  of  royals  [reals]  of 
plate,  fourscore  pounds  weight  of  golde,  and  sixe  and 
twentie  tunne  of  siluer."  To  show  how  thoroughly 
Drake  did  his  work,  piratical  as  it  was,  the  narrator 
of  the  voyage  says  that  there  were  found  onboard 
two  silver  cups,  which  were  the  pilot's,  to  whom  the 
General  said,  "Senior  [Senor]  Pilot,  you  haue  here 
two  siluer  cups ;  but  I  must  needes  haue  one  of  them  " ; 
and  the  pilot  gave  him  one  "because  hee  could  not 
otherwise  chuse,"  and  gave  the  other  to  the  ship's 
steward,  perhaps  for  as  good  a  reason.  Thus  went 
the  voyage;  now  rifling  a  town,  now  plundering  a 
captive,  now  capturing  a  vessel  and  taking  "a  fawl- 
con  [breastplate]  of  golde  with  a  great  emeraud  in  the 
breast  thereof,"  from  the  owner  in  person.  Never 
once  did  they  encounter  an  armed  opponent,  or  en- 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

gage  in  a  fair  fight;  on  the  other  hand,  they  were 
never  guilty,  as  the  Spaniards  often  were,  of  wanton 
cruelty,  judging  both  sides  by  the  testimony  of  their 
own  witnesses.  It  was  an  ignoble  warfare  in  one 
sense;  but  when  we  consider  that  these  Englishmen 
were  in  an  unknown  sea,  with  none  but  unwilling 
pilots,  and  that  there  was  not  a  man  along  the  shore 
who  was  not  their  enemy,  there  was  surely  an  ele- 
ment of  daring  in  the  whole  affair. 

They  repaired  their  ships  at  the  island  of  Sanno; 
and  there  the  attacks  upon  the  Spaniards  ended. 
The  narrator  thus  sums  up  the  situation:  "Our  Gen- 
eral at  this  place  and  time,  thinking  himselfe  both  in 
respect  of  his  priuate  iniuries  received  from  the  Span- 
iards, as  also  of  their  contempts  and  indignities  of- 
fered to  our  countrey  and  Prince  in  generall,  suffi- 
ciently satisfied  and  reuenged,  and  supposing  that 
her  Maiestie  at  his  returne  would  rest  contented  with 
this  seruice,  purposed  to  continue  no  longer  upon  the 
Spanish  coastes,  but  began  to  consider  and  to  con- 
sult of  the  best  way  for  his  countrey." 

He  resolved  at  last  to  avoid  the  Strait  of  Magellan, 
which  he  had  found  dangerous,  and  the  Atlantic 
Ocean,  where  he  was  too  well  known,  and  to  go  north- 
ward along  the  coast,  and  sail  across  the  Pacific  as 
he  had  already  crossed  the  Atlantic.  He  sailed  as 
far  north  as  California,  which  he  called  New  Albion ; 
he  entered  "a  faire  and  good  bay,"  which  may  have 
been  that  of  San  Francisco;  he  took  possession  of 
the  country  in  the  name  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  setting 
up  a  post  with  that  announcement.  Pie  then  sup- 
posed, but  erroneously,  that  the  Spaniards  had  never 
visited  that  region,  and  his  recorder  says  of  it :  "There 
is  no  part  of  earth  here  to  bee  taken  up  wherein  there 

92 


HI  S TORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

is  not  some  speciall  likelihood  of  gold  and  silver." 
Then  he  sailed  across  the  Pacific,  this  passage  lasting 
from  midsummer  until  October  18  (1579),  when  he 
and  his  men  came  among  the  islands  off  the  coast  of 
Africa,  and  so  rounded  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  and 
reached  England  at  last,  after  three  years'  absence. 
They  were  the  first  Englishmen  to  sail  round  the 
world,  and  the  first  of  their  countrymen  to  visit  those 
islands  of  "the  gorgeous  East"  which  Portugal  had 
first  reached,  and  Spain  had  now  wrested  from  Port- 
ugal. 

The  feats  of  Hawkins  and  Drake,  clouded  as  they 
were  by  the  slave-trade  in  one  case,  and  by  what 
seemed  much  like  piracy  in  the  other,  produced  a 
great  stir  in  England,  "  The  nakednesse  of  the  Span- 
iards and  their  long-hidden  secrets  are  now  at  length 
espied."  Thus  wrote  Hakluyt  three  years  after 
Drake's  return,  and  urged  "the  deducting  of  some 
colonies  of  our  superfluous  people  into  those  temper- 
ate and  fertile  partes  of  America  which,  being  within 
six  weekes  sailing  of  England,  are  yet  unpossessed 
by  any  Christians,  and  seeme  to  offer  themselves  unto 
us,  and  stretching  nearer  unto  her  Majesty's  domin- 
ions than  to  any  other  part  of  Europe."  The  for- 
gotten explorations  of  Cabot  were  now  remembered. 
Here  was  a  vast  country  to  which  Spain  and  France 
had  laid  claim,  but  which  neither  had  colonized.  The 
fishermen  of  four  or  five  nations  were  constantly  re- 
sorting thither,  but  it  belonged,  by  right  of  prior 
discovery,  to  England  alone.  Why  should  not  Eng- 
land occupy  it?  "It  seems  probable,"  wrote  the  his- 
torian of  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert  in  1583,  "by  event 
of  precedent  attempts  made  by  the  Spanyards  and 
French  sundry  times"  (i.  e.,  by  their  uniform  failure) 

94 


THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

"that  the  countries  lying  north  of  Florida  God  hath 
reserued  the  same  to  be  reduced  unto  Christian  civil- 
ity by  the  English  nation.  For  not  long  after  that 
Christopher  Columbus  had  discouered  the  islands  and 
continents  of  the  West  Indies  for  Spayne,  John  and 
Sebastian  Cabot  made  discovery  also  of  the  West 
from  Florida  northwards  to  the  behoof e  of  England." 
Frobisher  had  already  attempted  the  Northwest  pas- 
sage ;  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  the  first  English  colonizer, 
took  possession  of  Newfoundland  in  the  name  of  the 
Queen,  and  tried  in  vain  to  settle  a  colony  there ;  and 
he  died  at  sea  at  last,  as  described  in  Longfellow's 
ballad : 

"He  sat  upon  the  deck, 

The  Book  was  in  his  hand, 
'Do  not  fear;  Heaven  is  as  near,' 
He  said,  'by  water  as  by  land.'" 

He  had  obtained  a  commission  from  the  Queen  "to 
inhabit  and  possess  at  his  choice  all  remote  and  heath- 
en lands  not  in  the  actual  possession  of  any  Christian 
prince."  He  himself  obtained  for  his  body  but  the 
unquiet  possession  of  a  grave  in  the  deep  sea;  but 
his  attempt  was  one  event  more  in  the  great  series 
of  English  enterprises.  After  him  his  half-brother 
Ralegh  sent  Amidas  and  Barlow  (1584)  to  explore 
what  was  then  first  called  Virginia  in  honor  of  the 
Queen ;  and  the  year  after  Ralegh  sent  an  ineffectual 
colony  to  establish  itself  within  what  is  now  North 
Carolina.  Then  the  tumults  of  war  arose  again;  and 
Sir  Francis  Drake  was  summoned  to  lead  a  great 
naval  expedition,  a  real  "armada,"  to  the  attack  on 
Spanish  America. 

He  sailed  from  Plymouth,  England,  September  17, 

95 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

1585,  with  about  twenty-five  vessels  carrying  2300 
men,  and  he  had  under  him,  as  vice-admiral,  Captain 
Martin  Frobisher,  famous  by  his  endeavor  after  the 
Northwest  passage.  I  must  pass  lightly  over  the  de- 
tails of  Drake's  enterprise.  It  was  full  of  daring, 
though  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  Spanish  forts 
in  the  West  Indies  were  weak,  their  ordnance  poor, 
and  their  garrisons  small.  At  the  city  of  San  Do- 
mingo, which  is  described  as  "the  antientest  and 
chief  inhabited  place  in  all  the  tract  of  country  here- 
about," Drake  landed  a  thousand  or  twelve  hundred 
men.  A  hundred  cavalrymen  hovered  near  them, 
but  quicky  retreated ;  the  thousand  Englishmen,  di- 
vided in  two  portions,  assaulted  the  two  city  gates, 
carried  them  easily,  and  then  reunited  in  the  market- 
place. Towards  midnight  they  tried  the  gates  of 
the  castle;  it  was  at  once  abandoned,  and  by  degrees, 
street  by  street,  the  invaders  got  possession  of  half 
the  town.  The  Spanish  commissioners  held  the  other 
half,  and  there  were  constant  negotiations  for  ran- 
som; "but  upon  disagreement,"  says  the  English  nar- 
rator, "we  still  spent  the  early  mornings  in  firing  the 
outmost  houses;  but  they  being  built  very  magnifi- 
cently of  stone,  with  high  lofts,  gave  us  no  small  tra- 
vail to  ruin  them."  They  kept  two  hundred  sailors 
busy  at  this  work  of  firing  nouses,  while  as  many 
soldiers  stood  guard  over  them,  and  yet  had  not  de- 
stroyed more  than  a  third  part  of  the  town  when 
they  consented  to  accept  twenty-five  thousand  ducats 
for  the  ransom  of  the  rest. 

It  is  hard  to  distinguish  this  from  the  career  of  a 
buccaneer ;  but,  after  all,  Drake  was  a  mild-mannered 
gentleman,  and  kept  a  chaplain.  There  are,  to  be 
sure,   in   the  anonymous   "short  abstract"   of  this 

96 


THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

voyage  "in  the  handwriting  of  the  time,"  published 
by  the  Hakluyt  Society,  some  ugly  hints  as  to  the 
private  morals  of  the  officers  of  Drake's  ship,  in- 
cluding the  captain  himself.  And  there  is  something 
very  grotesque  in  the  final  fall  from  grace  of  the  chap- 
lain, Francis  Fletcher,  himself,  as  described  in  a 
memorandum  among  the  Harleian  MSS.  This  is  the 
same  chaplain  who  had  the  chalice  and  the  altar- 
cloth  as  his  share  of  the  plunder  of  a  church  at  San- 
tiago. Drake  afterwards  found  him  guilty  of  mutiny, 
and  apparently  felt  himself  free  to  pronounce  both 
temporal  and  spiritual  penalties,  as  given  in  the  fol- 
lowing narrative  by  an  eye-witness: 

"Drake  excommunicated  Fletcher  shortly  after.  ...  He 
called  all  the  company  together,  and  then  put  a  lock  about 
one  of  his  legs,  and  Drake  sytting  cros  legged  on  a  chest,  and 
a  paire  of  pantoffles  [slippers]  in  his  hand,  he  said,  Francis 
Fletcher,  I  doo  heere  excomunicate  the  out  of  ye  Church  of 
God,  and  from  all  benefites  and  graces  thereof,  and  I  de- 
nounce the  to  the  divell  and  all  his  angells;  and  then  he 
charged  him  vppon  payne  of  death  not  once  to  come  before 
the  mast,  for  if  hee  did,  he  swore  he  should  be  hanged;  and 
Drake  ca'wsed  a  posy  [inscription]  to  be  written  and  bond 
about  Fletcher's  arme,  with  chardge  that  if  hee  took  it  of 
hee  should  then  be  hanged.  The  poes  [posy  or  inscription] 
was,  Francis  fletcher,  ye  falsest  knave  that  liveth." 

Carthagena  was  next  attacked  by  Drake,  and  far 
more  stoutly  defended,  the  inhabitants  having  had 
twenty  days'  notice  because  of  the  attack  on  San 
Domingo.  Carthagena  was  smaller,  but  for  various 
reasons  more  important ;  there  had  been  preparations 
for  attack,  the  women  and  children  had  been  sent 
away,  with  much  valuable  property ;  a  few  old-fash- 
ioned cannon  had  been  brought  together;  there  were 
.  7  o7 


HISTORY    OP    THE    UNITED    STATES 

barricades  made  of  earth  and  water-pipes  across  the 
principal  streets;  there  were  pointed  sticks  tipped 
with  Indian  poisons,  and  stuck  in  the  ground,  points 
upward.  There  were  also  Indian  allies  armed  with 
bows  and  poisoned  arrows.  Against  all  these  ob- 
stacles the  Englishmen  charged  pell-mell  with  pikes 
and  swords,  relying  little  upon  fire-arms.  They  had 
longer  pikes  than  the  Spaniards,  and  more  of  the 
Englishmen  were  armed.  "  Every  man  came  so  will- 
ingly on  to  the  service,  as  the  enemy  was  not  able  to 
endure  the  fury  of  such  hot  assault."  It  ended  in 
the  ransoming  of  the  town  for  110,000  ducats,  or 
about  £30,000.  It  seems,  by  the  report  of  the  coun- 
cil of  captains,  that  £100,000  had  been  the  original 
demand,  but  these  officers  say  that  they  can  "with 
much  honor  and  reputation,"  accept  the  smaller  sum 
after  all,  "inasmuch,"  they  add,  "as  we  have  taken 
our  full  pleasure,  both  in  the  uttermost  sacking  and 
spoiling  of  all  their  household  goods  and  merchan- 
dise, as  also  in  that  we  have  consumed  and  ruined  a 
great  part  of  the  town  by  fire."  After  all,  the  Eng- 
lishmen insisted  that  this  ransom  did  not  include  the 
abbey  and  the  block-house  or  castle,  and  they  forced 
the  Spaniards  to  give  "a  thousand  crowns"  more  for 
the  abbey,  and  because  there  was  no  money  left  with 
which  to  redeem  the  castle,  it  was  blown  up  by  the 
English.  Drake  afterwards  took  St.  Augustine,  al- 
ready settled  by  the  Spaniards,  and  after  sailing 
northward,  and  taking  on  board  the  survivors  of 
Ralegh's  unsuccessful  colony  in  what  is  now  North 
Carolina,  he  sailed  for  England. 

What  a  lawless  and  even  barbarous  life  was  this 
which  Drake  led  upon  the  American  coast  and  among 
the  Spanish  settlements!     Yet  he  was  not  held  to 

98 


THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

have  dishonored  his  nation,  but  the  contrary.  His 
Queen  rewarded  him,  poets  sang  of  him,  and  Sir 
Philip  Sidney,  the  mirror  of  all  chivalry  at  that  day, 
would  have  joined  one  of  his  expeditions  had  not  his 
royal  mistress  kept  him  at  home.  The  Spaniards 
would  have  done  no  better,  to  be  sure,  and  would 
have  brought  to  bear  all  the  horrors  of  the  Inquisi- 
tion besides.  Yet  the  English  were  apt  pupils  in  all 
the  atrocities  of  personal  torture.  Cavendish,  who 
afterwards  sailed  in  the  track  of  Drake,  circumnavi- 
gating the  globe  like  him,  took  a  small  bark  on  the 
coast  of  Chili,  which  vessel  had  on  board  three  Span- 
iards and  a  Fleming.  These  men  were  bound  to 
Lima  with  letters  warning  the  inhabitants  tff  the  ap- 
proach of  the  English,  and  they  had  sworn  before 
their  priests  that  in  case  of  danger  the  letters  should 
be  thrown  overboard.  "Yet  our  General,"  says  the 
narrator,  "  wrought  so  with  them  that  they  did  con- 
fess it ;  but  he  was  fain  to  cause  them  to  be  tormented 
with  their  thumbs  in  a  wrench,  and  to  continue  three 
several  times  with  extreme  pain.  Also  he  made  the 
old  Fleming  believe  that  he  would  hang  him,  and  the 
rope  being  about  his  neck,  he  was  pulled  up  a  little 
from  the  hatches,  and  yet  he  would  not  confess, 
choosing  rather  to  die  than  to  be  perjured.  In  the 
end  it  was  confessed  by  one  of  the  Spaniards."  Who 
can  help  feeling  more  respect  for  the  fidelity  of  this 
old  man,  who  would  die  but  not  break  his  oath,  than 
for  the  men  who  tortured  him  ? 

Yet  it  is  just  to  say  that  the  expeditions  of  Caven- 
dish, like  the  later  enterprises  of  Drake,  were  a  school 
for  personal  courage,  and  were  not  aimed  merely 
against  the  defenceless.  Cavendish  gave  battle  off 
California  to  the  great  Spanish  flag-ship  of  the  Paci- 

99 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

fie,  the  Santa  Anna,  of  700  tons  burden,  bound  home 
from  the  Philippine  Islands.  They  fought  for  five  or 
six  hours  with  heavy  ordnance  and  with  small  arms, 
and  the  Spaniards  at  last  surrendered.  There  were 
on  board  122,000  pesos  of  gold,  besides  silks  and 
satins  and  other  merchandise,  with  provisions  and 
wines.  These  Cavendish  seized,  put  the  crew  and 
passengers — nearly  200  in  all — on  shore,  with  tents, 
provisions,  and  planks,  and  burned  the  Santa  Anna 
to  the  water's  edge.  Then  he  sailed  for  England 
with  his  treasures,  across  the  Pacific  Ocean,  and  thus 
became  the  second  English  circumnavigator  of  the 
globe.  This  sort  of  privateering  was  an  advance  on 
the  slave-trading  of  Hawkins  and  on  Drake's  early 
assaults  upon  almost  defenceless  towns;  but  it  was 
often  very  remote  from  all  honorable  warfare.  Yet 
it  was  by  such  means  that  the  power  of  Spain  was 
broken,  and  that  the  name  of  England  and  England's 
queen  became  mighty  upon  the  seas. 

As  the  sixteenth  century  began  with  the  fame  of 
the  Cabots,  so  it  ended  with  the  dreams  of  Ralegh. 
It  is  to  be  observed  that  none  of  these  great  bucca- 
neers had  done  anything  with  a  view  to  colonizing, 
nor  would  it  have  been  possible,  by  armed  force,  to 
have  held  the  conquered  Spanish  towns.  Had  Eng- 
land only  been  strong  enough  for  this,  South  Ameri- 
ca as  well  as  North  America  might  have  spoken  the 
English  tongue  to-day.  But  it  was  the  British  naval 
strength  only  that  was  established,  and  after  the  dis- 
persal of  the  great  Spanish  Armada  sent  by  Philip  II. 
against  England  in  1588,  the  power  of  Spain  upon  the 
water  was  forever  broken.  This  opened  the  way  for 
England  to  colonize  unmolested  the  northern  half  of 
the  New  World ;  and  the  great  promoter  of  this  work, 

100 


THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

Sir  Walter  Ralegh,  was  the  connecting  link  between 
two  generations  of  Englishmen.  He  was  at  once  the 
last  of  the  buccaneers  and  the  first  of  the  colonizers. 

He  himself  had  made  a  voyage,  led  by  as  wild  a 
dream  as  any  which,  in  that  age  of  dreams,  bewil- 
dered an  explorer.  We  must  remember  that,  though 
the  terrors  of  the  ocean  were  partly  dispelled,  their 
mysteries  still  held  their  sway  over  men.  Job  Har- 
top,  in  the  region  of  the  Bermudas,  describes  a  mer- 
man: "We  discovered  a  monster  in  the  sea,  who 
showed  himself  three  times  unto  us  from  the  middle 
upward,  in  which  part  he  was  proportioned  like  a 
man,  of  the  complexion  of  a  mulatto  or  tawny  Ind- 
ian." But  especially  the  accounts  were  multiplied 
of  cities  or  islands  which  now  appeared,  now  disap- 
peared, and  must  be  patiently  sought  out.  Sir  John 
Hawkins  reported  "  certain  flitting  islands"  about  the 
Canaries  "which  have  been  oftentimes  seene,  and 
when  men  approached  them  neere,  they  vanished  .  .  . 
and  therefore  it  should  seeme  he  is  not  yet  born  to 
whom  God  hath  appointed  the  finding  of  them." 
Henry  Hawkes,  speaking  of  that  standing  mystery, 
the  Seven  Cities  of  Cibola,  says  that  the  Spaniards 
believed  the  Indians  to  cast  a  mist  over  these  cities, 
through  witchcraft,  so  that  none  could  find  them. 
Is  it  strange  that  under  these  influences  Sir  Walter 
Ralegh  went  in  search  of  the  fabled  empire  of 
Guiana  ? 

Guiana  was  supposed  in  those  days  to  be  a  third 
great  American  treasure-house,  surpassing  those  of 
Peru  and  Mexico.  Its  capital  was  named  El  Dorado 
—"the  gilded."  Spanish  adventurers  claimed  to 
have  seen  it  from  afar,  and  described  its  houses  as 
roofed  with  gold  and  silver,  and  its  temples  as  filled 

IOI 


'•.:fe'iJB?r.6R:Y  :QF*  THE    UNITED    STATES 

with  statues  of  pure  gold.     Milton  links  it  with  Peru 
and  Mexico: 

"Rich  Mexico,  the  seat  of  Montezuma, 
And  Cuzco,  in  Peru,  the  richer  seat 
Of  Atabalipa,  and  yet  unspoiled 
Guiana,  whose  great  city  Geryon's  sons 
Call  El  Dorado." 

Ralegh  himself  went  in  search  of  this  El  Dorado, 
sailing  up  the  Orinoco  to  find  the  kingdom,  which 
was  said  to  lie  upon  an  island  in  a  salt-water  lake, 
like  the  Caspian  Sea.  He  brought  home  report  of 
many  wonders,  including  a  race  called  Ewaiponima, 
of  whom  he  says  that  they  have  eyes  in  their  shoul- 
ders and  mouths  in  the  middle  of  their  breasts,  with 
a  long  train  of  hair  growing  backward  between  their 
shoulders.  He  admits  that  he  never  saw  them,  but 
says  that  every  child  in  the  provinces  he  visited  af- 
firmed of  their  existence.  It  was  of  these  imaginary 
beings  that  Shakespeare  describes  Othello  as  dis- 
coursing : 

"The  cannibals  that  each  other  eat, 
The  Anthropophagi  and  men  whose  heads 
Do  grow  beneath  their  shoulders." 

Ralegh  also  reports  a  description  he  had  heard  of  the 
inhabitants  of  this  wondrous  empire,  sitting  with  the 
emperor  at  their  carousals,  their  bodies  stripped 
naked  and  covered  with  a  white  balsam,  on  which 
powdered  gold  was  blown  by  servants  through  hol- 
low canes  "  until  they  be  all  shining  from  the  foot  to 
the  head,  and  in  this  sort  they  sit  drinking  by  twenties 
and  hundreds,  and  continue  in  drunkenness  some- 
times six  or  seven  days  together." 

102 


THE    OLD    ENGLISH    SEAMEN 

Ralegh  brought  home  few  trophies ;  but  his  descrip- 
tions of  nature  were  so  beautiful  and  his  treatment 
of  the  natives  so  generous  that,  in  spite  of  his  having 
a  touch  of  the  buccaneer  quality  about  him,  we  can 
well  accept  the  phrase  that  in  him  "chivalry  left  the 
land  and  launched  upon  the  deep."  But  that  which 
makes  his  memory  dear  to  later  generations  is  that 
he,  beyond  any  man  of  his  time,  saw  the  vast  field 
open  for  American  colonization,  and  persistently  urg- 
ed upon  Queen  Elizabeth  to  enter  it.  "  Whatso- 
ever prince  shall  possesse  it,"  he  wrote  of  his  fabled 
Guiana,  "  shall  be  greatest;  and  if  the  King  of  Spayne 
enjoy  it,  he  will  become  unresistable."  Then  he 
closes  with  this  high  strain  of  appeal,  which  might 
well  come  with  irresistible  force  from  the  courtier- 
warrior  who  had  taught  the  American  Indians  to  call 
his  queen  "Ezrabeta  Cassipuna  Aquerewana,"  which 
means,  he  says,  "Elizabeth,  the  great  princess,  or 
greatest  commander": 

"To  speake  more  at  this  time  I  feare  would  be  but  trouble- 
some. I  trust  in  God,  this  being  true,  will  suffice,  and  that 
He  which  is  King  of  al  Kings  and  Lorde  of  Lords  will  put  it 
into  thy  heart  which  is  Lady  of  Ladies  to  possesse  it.  If 
not,  I  will  judge  those  men  worthy  to  be  kings  thereof,  that 
by  her  grace  and  leaue  will  undertake  it  of  themselues." 


V 

THE    FRENCH    VOYAGEURS 

WHEN  Spain  and  Portugal  undertook,  in  1494,  to 
divide  the  unexplored  portions  of  the  globe  be- 
tween them,  under  the  Pope's  two  edicts  of  the  pre- 
vious year,  that  impertinent  proposal  was  received 
by  England  and  France  in  very  characteristic  ways. 
England  met  it  with  blunt  contempt,  and  France 
with  an  epigram.  "The  King  of  France  sent  word 
to  our  great  Emperor,"  says  Bernal  Diaz,  describing 
the  capture  of  some  Spanish  treasure  -  ships  by  a 
French  pirate,  "that  as  he  and  the  King  of  Portugal 
had  divided  the  earth  between  themselves,  without 
giving  him  a  share  of  it,  he  should  like  them  to  show 
him  our  father  Adam's  will,  in  order  to  know  if  he 
had  made  them  his  sole  heirs."  (Que  mostrassen  el 
testamento  de  nuestro  padre  Adan,  si  les  dexo  a  ellos 
solamente  por  herederos.)  In  the  meanwhile  he  warn- 
ed them  that  he  should  feel  quite  free  to  take  all  he 
could,  upon  the  ocean. 

France  was  not  long  content  with  laying  claim  to  the 
sea,  but  wished  to  have  the  land  also.  The  name  of 
"New  France"  may  still  be  seen  on  early  maps  and 
globes,  sometimes  covering  all  that  part  of  the  Atlan- 
tic coast  north  of  Florida,  and  sometimes — as  in  the 
map  of  Ortelius,  made  in  1572 — the  whole  of  North 
and  South  America.    All  this  claim  was  based  upon  the 

104 


THE    FRENCH    V.OYAGEURS 

explorations,  first  of  Verrazzano  (1524),  and  then  of 
Cartier  (1534-1540).  The  first  of  these  two  voyagers 
sailed  along  the  coast ;  the  second  penetrated  into  the 
interior,  and  the  great  river  St.  Lawrence  was  earliest 
known  to  Europeans  through  the  graphic  narrative 
of  its  original  French  explorer.  Perhaps  no  two  ex- 
peditions since  Columbus  and  Cabot  have  added  more 
to  the  geographical  knowledge  of  the  world— or  would 
have  added  to  it  but  for  the  doubt  that  still  rests  in 
some  minds  over  the  authenticity  of  Verrazzano's 
narrative.  To  such  extremes  has  this  doubt  been 
carried  that  Bancroft,  in  the  revised  edition  of  his 
history,  did  not  so  much  as  mention  the  name  of  Ver- 
razzano, though  the  general  opinon  of  authorities 
now  accepts  his  narrative  as  genuine. 

Like  many  Italian  navigators  of  that  age,  he  served 
other  nations  than  his  own,  and  sailed  by  order  of 
Francis  I.,  whose  attention  had  just  been  called  from 
royal  festivals  and  combats  of  lions  to  take  part  in 
the  exploration  of  the  world.     For  this  purpose  he 
sent  out  Verrazzano  with  four  ships  "  to  discover  new 
lands"   (a  discoprir  nuove  terre),  and  it  was  to  de- 
scribe these  same  regions  that  a  letter  was  written 
by  the  explorer  from  Dieppe  to  the  King,  July  8, 
1524.     This  letter  was  published  by  Ramusio  about 
forty  years  later,   and  an  English  translation  of  it 
appeared  in  Hakluyt's  famous  collection.     A  manu- 
script copy  of  the  letter  was  discovered  by  Professor 
George  W.  Greene,  at  Florence,  about  1840,  and  the 
letter  itself  was  reprinted  from  this  copy  by  the  New 
York  Historical  Society.     If  authentic,  it  is  the  ear- 
liest original  account  of  the  Atlantic  coast-  of  the 
United  States.     Verrazzano  saw  land  first  at  what 
is  now  North  Carolina— "a  newe  land  never  before 

i°5 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

seen  by  any  man,  either  auncient  or  moderne" — and 
afterwards  sailed  northward,  putting  in  at  many 
harbors.  The  natives  everywhere  received  him  kind- 
ly at  first,  and  saved  the  life  of  a  young  sailor  who 
was  sent  ashore  with  presents  for  them,  and  became 
exhausted  with  swimming.  In  return,  the  French- 
men carried  off  a  child,  and  attempted  to  carry  off  a 
young  girl,  tall  and  very  beautiful  (di  tnolta  bellezza- 
e  dJ  alta  statura),  whom  they  found  hidden  with  an  old- 
er woman  near  the  shore,  and  whom  they  vainly  tried 
to  tempt  by  presents.  Everything  which  they  of- 
fered was  thrown  down  by  the  Indian  girl  in  great 
anger  (e  con  ira  a  terra  gittava),  and  when  they  at- 
tempted to  seize  her,  she  shrieked  so  loudly  that  they 
let  her  alone.  After  such  a  transaction,  we  can  un- 
derstand why  Verrazzano,  in  the  latter  part  of  his 
voyage,  found  it  impossible  to  command  the  con- 
fidence of  the  natives,  so  that  on  the  northern  coast 
of  New  England  the  Indians  would  not  suffer  him  to 
land,  but  would  only  let  down  their  furs  and  provi- 
sions into  the  boats  from  the  rocks,  insisting  on  in- 
stant payment,  and  making  signs  of  disdain  and  con- 
tempt (dtspregto  e  verecondia).  In  accordance  with 
the  usual  logic  of  adventurers  at  that  day,  Verraz- 
zano made  up  his  mind  that  these  poor  creatures  had 
no  sense  of  religion. 

This  early  explorer's  observations  on  the  natives 
have  little  value;  but  his  descriptions  of  the  coast, 
especially  of  the  harbors  of  New  York  and  Newport, 
have  peculiar  interest,  and  his  charts,  although  not 
now  preserved,  had  much  influence  upon  contem- 
porary -geography.  He  sailed  northward  as  far  as 
Newfoundland,  having  explored  the  coast  from  340 
to  500  of  north  latitude,  and  left  on  record  the  earliest 

106 


THE    FRENCH    VOYAGEURS 

description  of  the  whole  region.  As  to  the  ultimate 
fate  of  Verrazzano  reports  differ,  some  asserting  that 
he  was  killed  and  eaten  by  savages,  and  others  that  he 
was  hanged  by  the  Spaniards  as  a  pirate.  Some- 
thing of  the  same  shadowy  uncertainty  still  attaches 
to  his  reputation. 

A  greater  than  Verrazzano  followed  him,  aroused 
and  stimulated  by  what  he  had  done.  The  first  ex- 
plorer of  the  St.  Lawrence  was  Jacques  Carrier,  who 
had  sailed  for  years  on  fishing  voyages  from  St.  Malo, 
which  was  and  is  the  nursery  of  the  hardiest  sailors 
of  France.  Having  visited  Labrador,  he  longed  to 
penetrate  farther ;  and  sailing  in  April,  1534,  he  visited 
Newfoundland  and  the  Bay  of  Chaleur,  and  set  up  a 
cross  at  Gaspe,  telling  the  natives  with  pious  fraud 
that  it  was  only  intended  for  a  beacon.  He  then 
sailed  up  the  St.  Lawrence  nearly  to  Anticosti,  sup- 
posing that  this  great  stream  was  the  long-sought 
passage  to  Cathay  and  the  Indies.  The  next  year  he 
sailed  again,  with  three  vessels,  and  for  the  first  time 
described  to  the  world  what  he  calls  "the  river  of 
Hochelaga."  He  applied  the  name  of  Canada  to  a 
certain  part  of  the  banks  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  call- 
ing all  below  Saguenay,  and  all  above  Hochelaga, 
these  being  Indian  names.  There  has  been,  how- 
ever, much  discussion  about  the  word  "Canada," 
which  means  "a  village"  in  certain  Indian  dialects, 
and  also  signifies,  curiously  enough,  "a  ravine"  in 
Spanish,  and  "a  lane"  in  Portuguese. 

In  the  greatest  delight  over  the  beauty  of  the  river, 
the  Frenchmen  sailed  onward.  They  visited  Stada- 
cone,  the  site  of  Quebec,  and  Hochelaga,  the  site  of 
Montreal,  Carrier  being  the  first  to  give  the  name  of 
Mont  Royal  or  Real  to  the  neighboring  mountain. 

107 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

At  Hochelaga  they  found  the  carefully  built  forts  of 
the  Indians  which  Cartier  minutely  describes,  and 
the  large  communal  houses  already  mentioned.  They 
met  everywhere  with  a  cordial  reception,  except  that 
the  Indians  brought  to  bear  strange  pretences  to  keep 
them  from  ascending  the  river  too  far.  The  chief 
device  was  the  following  : 

White  the  Frenchmen  lay  at  Stadacone  they  saw 
one  morning  a  boat  come  forth  from  the  woods  bear- 
ing three  men  "  dressed  like  devils,  wrapped  in  dog's 
skins,  white  and  black,  their  faces  besmeared  as  black 
as  any  coals,  with  horns  on  their  heads  more  than  a 
yard  long,"  and  as  this  passed  the  ships,  one  of  the 
men  made  a  long  oration,  neither  of  them  looking 
towards  the  ships ;  then  they  all  three  fell  flat  in  the 
boat,  when  the  Indians  came  out  to  meet  them,  and 
guided  them  to  the  shore.     It  was  afterwards  ex- 
plained that  these  were  messengers  from  the  god 
Cudraigny,  to  tell  the  Frenchmen  to  go  no  farther 
lest  they  should  perish  with  cold.     The  Frenchmen 
answered  that  the  alleged  god  was  but  a  fool— that 
Jesus  Christ  would  protect  his  followers  from  cold. 
Then  the  Indians,  dancing  and  shouting,  accepted 
this  interpretation,  and  made  no  further  objection. 
But  when  at  a  later  period  Cartier  and  his  compan- 
ions passed  the  dreary  winter,  first  of  all  Europeans, 
in  what  he  called  the  Harbor  of  the  Holy  Cross- 
somewhere  on  the  banks  of  the  St.  Charles  River- 
he  learned  by  suffering  that  the  threats  of  the  god 
Cudraigny  had  some  terror  in  them,  after  all.     He 
returned  to  France  the  following  summer,  leaving  no 
colony  in  the  New  World. 

For  the  first  French  efforts  at  actual  colonization 
we  must  look  southward  on  the  map  of  America 

1 08 


THE    FRENCH    VOYAGEURS 

again,  and  trace  the  career  of  a  different  class  of 
Frenchmen.  It  would  have  needed  but  a  few  minor 
changes  in  the  shifting  scenes  of  history  to  have 
caused  North  America  to  be  colonized  by  French 
Protestants,  instead  of  French  Catholics.  After 
Villegagnon  and  his  Huguenots  had  vainly  at- 
tempted a  colony  at  Rio  Janeiro  in  1555,  Jean  Ri- 
baut,  with  other  Huguenots,  made  an  actual  settle- 
ment seven  years  later  upon  what  is  now  the  South 
Carolina  coast.  At  his  first  approach  to  land,  the 
Indians  assembled  on  the  shore,  offering  their  own 
garments  to  the  French  officers,  and  pointing  out 
their  chief,  who  remained  sitting  on  boughs  of  laurel 
and  palm.  All  the  early  experience  of  the  French- 
men with  the  natives  was  marked  by  this  gentleness, 
and  by  a  very  ill -requited  hospitality.  Then  sail- 
ing to  what  is  now  the  St.  John's  River,  and  arriving 
on  May -day,  they  called  it  "  River  of  May,"  and 
found  in  it  that  charm  which  it  has  held  for  all  ex- 
plorers, down  to  the  successive  military  expeditions 
that  occupied  and  abandoned  it  during  our  own  civil 
war.  Here  they  were  again  received  by  a  picturesque 
crowd  of  savages,  wading  into  the  water  up  to  their 
shoulders,  and  bringing  little  baskets  of  maize  and 
of  white  and  red  mulberries,  while  others  offered  to 
help  their  visitors  ashore.  Other  rivers  also  the 
Frenchmen  visited,  naming  them  after  rivers  of 
France — the  Seine,  the  Loire — and  then  sailing  far- 
ther north,  they  entered  Port  Royal  Harbor,  "  finding 
the  same  one  of  the  fayrest  and  greatest  Havens  of 
the  worlde,"  says  the  quaint  old  translation  of  Thomas 
Hackit.  Here  they  left  behind  a  colony  of  thirty 
men,  under  Albert  de  la  Pierria,  to  complete  a  fort 
called  Charlesfort.     It  was  the  only  Christian  colony 

109 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

north  of  Mexico,  and  the  site  of  the  fort,  though  still 
disputed,  was  probably  not  far  from  Beaufort,  South 
Carolina.  The  lonely  colonists  spent  a  winter  of  ab- 
solute poverty  and  wretchedness.  They  were  fed 
by  the  Indians,  and  wronged  them  in  return.  They 
built  for  themselves  vessels  in  which  they  sailed  for 
France,  reaching  it  after  sufferings  too  great  to  tell. 

Still  another  French  Protestant  colony  followed  in 
1 564,  led  by  Rene  de  Laudonniere.  He  too  sought  the 
"  River  of  May  " ;  he  too  was  cordially  received  by  the 
Indians;  and  he  built  above  what  is  now  called  St. 
John's  Bluff,  on  the  river  of  that  name,  a  stronghold 
called  Fort  Caroline.  "The  place  is  so  pleasant," 
wrote  he,  "that  those  which  are  melancholike  would 
be  enforced  to  change  their  humor."  The  adventures 
of  this  colony  are  told  in  the  illustrated  narrative  of 
the  artist  Le  Moyne.  The  illustrations  are  so  graphic 
that  we  seem  in  the  midst  of  the  scenes  described. 
They  set  before  us  the  very  costumes  of  the  Frenchmen 
and  the  absence  of  costume  among  the  Indians.  .  We 
see  the  domestic  habits,  the  religious  sacrifices,  the  war- 
like contests,  the  Indian  faces  alone  being  convention- 
alized and  made  far  too  European  for  strict  fidelity. 
We  see  also  the  animals  that  excited  the  artist's  won- 
der, and  especially  the  alligator,  which  is  rendered 
with  wonderful  accuracy,  though  exaggerated  in  size. 
We  see  here  also  the  column  which  had  been  erected 
by  Ribaut  on  his  previous  voyage,  and  how  the  Ind- 
ians had  decked  it  after  worshipping  there  as  at  an 
altar. 

The  career  of  the  colony  was  a  tragedy.  Fort  Caro- 
line was  built;  the  colonists  mutinied  and  sought  to 
become  buccaneers,  "calling  us  cowards  and  green- 
horns," says  Le  Moyne,  "for  not  joining  in  the  pi- 

110 


THE, FRENCH    VOYAGEURS 

racy."  Failing  miserably  in  this,  and  wearing  out  the 
patience  of  their  generous  Indian  friends,  they  almost 
perished  of  famine.  The  very  fact  that  they  were  a 
Protestant  colony  brought  with  it  a  certain  disadvan- 
tage, so  long  as  the  colonists  were  French.  Protestant- 
ism in  England  reached  the  lower  classes,  but  never  in 
France.  The  Huguenots  belonged,  as  a  rule,  to  the 
middle  and  higher  classes,  and  the  peasants,  so  es- 
sential to  the  foundation  of  a  colony,  would  neither 
emigrate  nor  change  their  religion.  There  were 
plenty  of  adventurers,  but  no  agriculturists.  The 
Englishman  Hawkins  visited  and  relieved  them.  Ri- 
baut  came  from  France  and  again  gave  them  aid,  and 
their  lives  were  prolonged  only  to  meet  cruel  destruc- 
tion from  the  energy  and  perfidy  of  a  Spaniard,  Don 
Pedro  de  Menendez.  He  came  with  a  great  squad- 
ron of  thirty-four  vessels — his  flag-ship  being  nearly 
a  thousand  tons  burden — to  conquer  and  settle  the 
vast  continent,  then  known  as  Florida.  Parkman 
has  admirably  told  the  story  of  Menendez's  victory; 
suffice  it  to  say  that  he  overcame  the  little  colony, 
and  then,  after  taking  an  oath  upon  the  Bible,  add- 
ing the  sign  of  the  cross,  and  giving  a  pledge,  written 
and  sealed,  to  spare  their  lives,  he  proceeded  to  mas- 
sacre every  man  in  cold  blood,  sparing  only,  as  Le 
Moyne  tells  us,  a  drummer,  a  fifer,  and  a  fiddler.  It 
is  the  French  tradition  that  he  hanged  his  prisoners 
on  trees,  with  this  inscription:  "I  do  this  not  as  to 
Frenchmen,  but  as  to  Lutherans."  This  was  the 
same  Menendez  who  in  that  same  year  (1565)  had 
founded  the  Spanish  colony  of  St.  Augustine,  employ- 
ing for  this  purpose  the  negro  slaves  he  had  brought 
from  Africa — the  first  introduction,  probably,  of  slave 
labor  upon  the  soil  now  included  in  the  United  States. 

in 


HISTORY    OF    THE     UNITED    STATES 

Menendez  was  the  true  type  of  the  Spanish  conqueror 
of  that  day— a  race  of  whom  scarcely  one  in  a  thou- 
sand, as  poor  Le  Moyne  declares,  was  capable  of  a 
sensation  of  pity. 

Menendez  thanked  God  with  tears  for  his  victory 
over  the  little  garrison.  But  his  act  aroused  a  ter- 
rible demand  for  vengeance  in  France,  and  this  eager 
desire  was  satisfied  by  a  Frenchman — this  time  by 
one  who  was  probably  not  a  Huguenot,  but  a  Catho- 
lic. Dominique  de  Gourgues  had  been  chained  to  the 
oar  as  a  galley-slave  when  a  prisoner  to  the  Span- 
iards, and  finding  his  king  unable  or  unwilling  to 
avenge  the  insult  given  to  his  nation  in  America,  De 
Gourgues  sold  his  patrimony  that  he  might  organize 
an  expedition  of  his  own.  It  is  enough  to  say  that 
he  absolutely  annihilated,  in  1568,  the  colony  that 
Menendez  had  left  behind  him  in  Florida,  and  hanged 
the  Spaniards  to  the  same  trees  where  they  had 
hanged  the  French,  nailing  above  them  this  inscrip- 
tion :  "  I  do  this  not  as  to  Spaniards  or  Moors  (Maran- 
nes),  but  as  to  traitors,  robbers,  and  murderers." 

All  these  southern  and  Protestant  colonies  failed  at 
last.  It  was  farther  north,  in  the  lands  of  the  most 
zealous  of  Roman  Catholics,  and  in  the  regions  ex- 
plored long  since  by  Cartier,  that  the  brilliant  career 
of  French  colonization  in  America  was  to  have  its 
course.  Yet  for  many  years  the  French  voyages  to 
the  northeastern  coasts  of  America  were  for  fish- 
ing or  trade,  not  religion:  the  rover  went  before  the 
priest.  The  Cabots  are  said  by  Peter  Martyr  to  have 
found  in  use  on  the  banks  of  Newfoundland  the  word 
baccalaos  as  applied  to  codfish;  and  as  this  is  a 
Basque  word,  the  fact  has  led  some  writers  to  believe 
that  the  Basque  fishermen  had  already  reached  there, 

112 


THE    FRENCH    VOYAGEURS 

though  this  argument  is  not  now  generally  admitted. 
Cape  Breton,  which  is  supposed  to  be  the  oldest 
French  name  on  the  continent  of  North  America, 
belongs  to  a  region  described  on  a  Portuguese  map 
of  1520  as  "discovered  by  the  Bretons."  There  were 
French  fishing- vessels  off  Newfoundland  in  151 7,  and 
in  1578  there  were  as  many  as  one  hundred  and  fifty 
of  these,  all  other  nations  furnishing  but  two  hun- 
dred. Out  of  these  voyages  had  grown  temporary 
settlements,  and  the  fur  trade  sprang  up  by  degrees 
at  Anticosti,  at  Sable  Island,  and  especially  at  Ta- 
doussac.  It  became  rapidly  popular,  so  that  when 
two  nephews  of  Cartier  obtained  a  monopoly  of  it 
for  twelve  years,  the  news  produced  an  uproar,  and 
the  patent  was  revoked.  Through  this  trade  French- 
men learned  the  charm  of  the  wilderness,  and  these 
charms  attracted  then,  as  always,  a  very  questionable 
class  of  men.  Cartier,  in  1541,  was  authorized  to 
ransack  the  prisons  for  malefactors.  De  la  Roche, 
in  1598,  brought  a  crew  of  convicts.  De  Monts,  in 
1604,  was  authorized  to  impress  idlers  and  vagabonds 
for  his  colony.  To  keep  them  in  order,  he  brought 
both  Catholic  priests  and  Huguenot  ministers,  who 
disputed  heartily  on  the  way.  "  I  have  seen  our  cure 
and  the  minister,"  said  Champlain,  in  Parkman's 
translation,  "fall  to  with  their  fists  on  questions  of 
faith.  I  cannot  say  which  had  the  more  pluck,  or 
which  hit  the  harder,  but  I  know  that  the  minister 
sometimes  complained  to  the  Sieur  de  Monts  that  he 
had  been  beaten." 

The  Jesuits  reached  New  France  in  161 1,  and  from 

that  moment  the  religious  phase  of  the  emigration 

began.     But  their  style  of  missionary  effort  was  very 

unlike  that  severe  type  of  religion  which  had  made 

s  113 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  very  name  of  Christian  hated  in  the  days  when 
Christian  meant  Spaniard,  and  when  the  poor  Florida 
Indians  had  exclaimed,  in  despair,  "The  devil  is  the 
best  thing  in  the  world:  we  adore  him."  The  two 
bodies  of  invaders  held  the  same  faith,  acknowledged 
the  same  spiritual  chief;  but  here  the  resemblance 
ended.  From  the  beginning  the  Spaniards  came  as 
cruel  and  merciless  masters;  the  Frenchmen,  with 
few  exceptions,  as  kindly  and  genial  companions. 
The  Spanish  invaders  were  more  liberal  in  the  use 
of  Scripture  than  any  Puritan,  but  they  were  also 
much  more  formidable  in  the  application  of  it.  They 
maintained  unequivocally  that  the  earth  belonged  to 
the  elect,  and  that  they  were  the  elect.  The  famous 
"  Requisition,"  which  was  to  be  read  by  the  Spanish 
commanders  on  entering  each  province  for  conquest, 
gave  the  full  Bible  narrative  of  the  origin  of  the 
human  race,  announced  the  lordship  of  St.  Peter,  the 
gift  of  the  New  World  to  Spain  by  his  successor  the 
Pope;  and  deduced  from  all  this  the  right  to  compel 
the  natives  to  adopt  the  true  religion.  If  they  re- 
fused, they  might  rightfully  be  enslaved  or  killed. 
The  learned  Dr.  Pedro  Santander,  addressing  the 
King  in  1557  in  regard  to  De  Soto's  expedition,  wrote 
thus: 

"This  is  the  land  promised  by  the  Eternal  Father  to  the 
faithful,  since  we  are  commanded  by  God  in  the  Holy  Script- 
ures to  take  it  from  them,  being  idolaters,  and  by  reason 
of  their  idolatry  and  sin  to  put  them  all  to  the  knife,  leav- 
ing no  living  thing  save  maidens  and  children,  their  cities 
robbed  and  sacked,  their  walls  and  houses  levelled  to  the 
earth." 

In  another  part  of  the  same  address  the  author  de- 
scribes Florida  as  "now  in  possession  of  the  Demon," 

114 


THE    FRENCH    VOYAGEURS 

and  the  natives  as  "  lost  sheep  which  have  been  snatch- 
ed away  by  the  dragon,  the  Demon."  There  is  no 
doubt  that  a  genuine  superstition  entered  into  the 
gloomy  fanaticism  of  the  Spaniards.  When  Colum- 
bus brought  back  from  one  of  his  voyages  some  native 
chiefs  whose  garments  and  ornaments  were  embroid- 
ered with  cats  and  owls,  the  curate  Bernaldez  an- 
nounced without  hesitation  that  these  grotesque 
forms  represented  the  deities  whom  these  people 
worshipped.  It  is  astonishing  how  much  easier  it  is 
to  justify  one's  self  in  taking  away  a  man's  property 
or  his  life  when  one  is  thoroughly  convinced  that  he 
worships  the  devil.  At  any  rate,  the  Spaniards  acted 
upon  this  principle.  Twelve  years  after  the  first  dis- 
covery of  Hispaniola,  as  Columbus  himself  writes, 
six-sevenths  of  the  natives  were  dead  through  ill- 
treatment. 

But  the  French  pioneers  were  perfectly  indifferent 
to  these  superstitions;  embroidered  cat  or  Scriptural 
malediction  troubled  them  very  little.  They  came 
for  trade,  for  exploration,  for  adventure,  and  also  for 
religion ;  but  almost  from  the  beginning  they  adapted 
themselves  to  the  Indians,  urged  on  them  their  relig- 
ion only  in  a  winning  way;  and  as  to  their  ways  of 
living,  were  willing  to  be  more  Indian  than  the  Ind- 
ians themselves.  The  instances  of  the  contrary 
were  to  be  found,  not  among  the  Roman  Catholic 
French,  but  among  the  Huguenots  in  Florida. 

The  spirit  which  was  exceptional  in  the  benevolent 
Spanish  monk  Las  Casas  was  common  among  French 
Jesuit  priests.  The  more  profoundly  they  felt  that 
the  Indians  were  by  nature  children  of  Satan,  the 
more  they  gave  soul  and  body  for  their  conversion. 
Pere  Le  Caron,  travelling  with  the  Hurons,  writes 

"5 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

frankly  about  his  infinite  miseries,  and  adds:  "But 
I  must  needs  tell  you  what  abundant  consolation  I 
found  under  all  my  troubles,  for,  alas !  when  one  sees 
so  many  infidels  needing  nothing  but  a  drop  of  water 
to  make  them  children  of  God,  he  feels  an  inexpres- 
sible ardor  to  labor  for  their  conversion  and  sacrifice 
to  it  his  repose  and  his  life."  At  times,  to  be  sure, 
the  Frenchmen  would  help  one  Indian  tribe  against 
another,  and  this  especially  against  the  Iroquois ;  but 
in  general  the  French  went  as  friendly  associates,  the 
Spaniards  as  brutal  task-masters. 

The  first  French  colonists  were  rarely  such  in  the 
English  or  even  the  Spanish  sense.  They  were  priests 
or  soldiers  or  traders — the  latter  at  first  predominat- 
ing. They  did  not  offer  to  buy  the  lands  of  the  Ind- 
ians, as  the  English  colonists  afterwards  did,  for  an 
agricultural  colony  was  not  their  aim.  They  wished 
to  wander  through  the  woods  with  the  Indians,  to 
join  in  their  hunting  and  their  wars,  and,  above  all, 
to  obtain  their  furs.  For  this  they  were  ready  to 
live  as  the  Indians  lived,  in  all  their  discomforts; 
they  addressed  them  as  "brothers"  or  as  "children"; 
they  married  Indian  wives  with  full  church  cere- 
monies. No  such  freedom  of  intercourse  marked  the 
life  of  any  English  settlers.  The  Frenchmen  appar- 
ently liked  to  have  the  Indians  with  them ;  the  sav- 
ages were  always  coming  and  going,  in  full  glory, 
about  the  French  settlements ;  they  feasted  and  slept 
beside  the  French;  they  were  greeted  with  military 
salutes.  The  stately  and  brilliant  Comte  de  Fronte- 
nac,  the  favorite  officer  of  Turenne  and  the  intimate 
friend  of  La  Grande  Mademoiselle,  did  not  disdain, 
when  Governor-general  of  Canada,  to  lead  in  person 
the  war-dance  of  his  Indians,  singing  and  waving  the 

116 


THE    FRENCH    VOYAGE URS 

hatchet,  while  a  wigwam  full  of  braves,  stripped  and 
painted  for  war,  went  dancing  and  howling  after  him, 
shouting  like  men  possessed,  as  the  French  narratives 
say.  He  himself  admits  that  he  did  it  deliberately, 
in  order  to  adopt  their  ways.  (Je  leitr  mis  moy-mesme 
la  hache  a  la  main  .  .  .  pour  m'accommoder  a  leitrs 
jagons  de  faire.)  Perhaps  no  single  act  ever  done  by 
a  Frenchman  explains  so  well  how  they  won  the 
hearts  of  the  Indians. 

The  pageantry  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  had, 
moreover,  its  charm  for  native  converts;  the  French 
officers  taught  them  how  to  fight ;  the  French  priests 
taught  them  how  to  die.  These  heroic  missionaries 
could  bear  torture  like  Indians,  and  could  forgive  their 
tormentors  as  Indians  could  not.  This  combination 
of  gentleness  with  courage  was  something  wholly  new 
to  the  Indian  philosophy  of  life.  Pere  Brebeuf  wrote 
to  Rome  from  Canada:  "That  which  above  all  things 
is  demanded  of  laborers  in  this  vineyard  is  an  un- 
failing sweetness  and  a  patience  thoroughly  tested." 
And  when  he  died  by  torture  in  1 649  he  so  conducted 
himself  that  the  Indians  drank  his  blood  and  the 
chief  devoured  his  heart,  in  the  hope  that  they  might 
share  his  heroism. 

But  while  the  missionaries  were  thus  gentle  and 
patient  with  their  converts,  their  modes  of  appeal  in- 
cluded the  whole  range  of  spiritual  terrors.  Pere  Le 
Jeune  wrote  home  earnestly  for  pictures  of  devils  tor- 
menting the  soul  with  fire,  serpents,  and  red-hot  pin- 
cers; Pere  Gamier,  in  a  manuscript  letter  copied  by 
Parkman,  asks  for  pictures  of  demons  and  dragons, 
and  suggests  that  a  single  representation  of  a  happy 
or  beautiful  soul  will  be  enough.  "  The  pictures  must 
not  be  in  profile,  but  in  full  face,  looking  squarely  and 

117 


HISTORY    OP    THE    UNITED    STATES 

with  open  eyes  at  the  beholder,  and  all  in  bright 
colors,  without  flowers  or  animals,  which  only  dis- 
tract." But,  after  all,  so  essentially  different  was 
the  French  temperament  from  the  Spanish  that  the 
worst  French  terrors  seemed  more  kindly  and  enjoy- 
able than  the  most  cheerful  form  of  Spanish  devo- 
tion. The  Spaniards  offered  only  the  threats  of 
future  torment  and  the  certainty  of  labor  and  suffer- 
ing here.  But  the  French  won  the  Indians  by  pre- 
cisely the  allurements  that  to  this  day  draw  strangers 
from  all  the  world  to  Paris — a  joyous  out-door  life 
and  an  unequalled  cookery.  "I  remember,"  says 
Lescarbot,  describing  his  winter  in  Canada,  "  that  on 
the  14th  of  January  (1607),  of  a  Sunday  afternoon, 
we  amused  ourselves  with  singing  and  music  on  the 
river  Equille,  and  that  in  the  same  month  we  went 
to  see  the  wheat-fields  two  leagues  from  the  fort,  and 
dined  merrily  in  the  sunshine."  At  these  feasts  there 
was  hardly  a  distinction  between  the  courtly  foreigner 
and  the  naked  Indian,  and  even  the  coarse  aboriginal 
palate  felt  that  here  was  some  one  who  would  teach  a 
new  felicity.  Parkman  tells  us  of  a  convert  who 
asked,  when  at  the  point  of  death,  whether  he  might 
expect  any  pastry  in  heaven  like  that  with  which  the 
French  had  regaled  him. 

In  return  for  these  blandishments  it  was  not  very 
hard  for  the  Indians  to  accept  the  picturesque  and 
accommodating  faith  of  their  guests.  This  was  not 
at  first  done  very  reverently,  to  be  sure.  Sometimes 
when  the  early  missionaries  asked  their  converts  for 
the  proper  words  to  translate  the  sacred  phrases  of 
the  catechism,  their  mischievous  proselytes  would 
give  them  very  improper  words  instead,  and  then 
would  shout  with  delight  whenever  the  priests  began 

118 


THE    FRENCH    VOYAGEURS 

their  lessons.  Dr.  George  E.  Ellis,  in  his  valuable 
book  The  Red  Man  and  the  White  Man,  points  out 
that  no  such  trick  was  ever  attempted,  so  far  as  we 
know,  beneath  the  graver  authority  of  the  apostle 
Eliot,  when  his  version  of  the  Scriptures  was  in  prog- 
ress. In  some  cases  the  native  criticisms  took  the 
form  of  more  serious  remonstrance.  Membertou,  one 
of  the  most  influential  of  the  early  Indian  converts, 
said  frankly  that  he  did  not  like  the  petition  for 
daily  bread  in  the  Lord's  Prayer,  and  thought  that 
some  distinct  allusion  to  moose  meat  and  fish  would 
be  far  better, 

To  these  roving  and  companionable  Frenchmen, 
or,  rather,  to  the  native  canoe-men,  who  were  often 
their  half-breed  posterity,  was  given  at  a  later  pe- 
riod the  name  voyageurs — a  name  still  used  for  the 
same  class  in  Canada,  though  it  describes  a  race  now 
vanishing.  I  have  ventured  to  anticipate  its  date  a 
little,  and  apply  it  to  the  French  rovers  of  this  early 
period,  because  it  is  one  of  these  words  which  come 
spontaneously  into  use,  tell  their  own  story,  and  save 
much  description.  The  character  that  afterwards 
culminated  in  the  class  called  voyageurs  was  the  char- 
acter which  lay  behind  all  the  early  French  enter- 
prises. It  implied  those  roving  qualities  which  led 
the  French  to  be  pioneers  in  the  fisheries  and  the  fur 
trade ;  and  which,  even  after  the  arrival  of  the  Jesuit 
missionaries,  still  prevailed  under  the  blessing  of  the 
Church.  The  Spaniards  were  gloomy  despots;  the 
Dutch  and  Swedes  were  traders ;  the  English,  at  least 
in  New  England,  were  religious  enthusiasts;  the 
French  were  voyageurs,  and  even  under  the  narrative 
of  the  most  heroic  and  saintly  priest  we  see  some- 
thing of  the  same  spirit.     The  best  early  type  of  the 

119 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

voyageur  temperament  combined  with  the  courage  of 
the  Church  militant  is  to  be  found  in  Samuel  de 
Champlain. 

After  all,  there  is  no  earthly  immortality  more  secure 
than  to  have  stamped  one's  name  on  the  map;  and 
that  of  Champlain  will  be  forever  associated  with  the 
beautiful  lake  which  he  first  described  and  to  which 
the  French  missionaries  vainly  attempted  to  attach 
another  name.  Champlain  was  a  Frenchman  of  good 
family,  who  had  served  in  the  army,  and  had,  indeed, 
been  from  his  childhood  familiar  with  the  scenes  of 
war,  because  he  had  dwelt  near  the  famous  city  of 
Rochelle,  the  very  hot-bed  of  the  civil  strife  between 
Catholics  and  Huguenots.  Much  curiosity  existing 
in  France  in  regard  to  the  great  successes  of  Spain  in 
America,  he  obtained  naval  employment  in  the  Span- 
ish service,  and  visited,  as  commander  of  a  ship,  the 
Spanish-American  colonies.  This  was  in  1599,  and 
he  wrote  a  report  on  the  condition  of  all  these  regions 
— a  report  probably  fuller  than  anything  else  exist- 
ing at  that  time,  inasmuch  as  the  Spaniards  syste- 
matically concealed  the  details  of  their  colonial  wealth. 
Little  did  they  know  that  they  had  in  the  humble 
French  captain  of  the  Saint-Julian  an  untiring  ob- 
server, who  would  reveal  to  the  acute  mind  of  Henry 
the  Fourth  of  France  many  of  the  secrets  of  Spanish 
domination  and  would  also  disgust  the  French  mind 
with  pictures  of  the  fanaticism  of  their  rivals.  In 
his  report  he  denounced  the  cruelty  of  the  Spaniards, 
described  the  way  in  which  they  converted  Indians 
by  the  Inquisition,  and  made  drawings  of  the  burn- 
ings of  heretics  by  priests.  His  observations  on  all 
commercial  matters  were  of  the  greatest  value,  and 
he  was  the  first,  or  one  of  the  first,  to  suggest  a  ship- 

1 20 


THE    FRENCH    VOYAGEURS 

canal  across  the  isthmus  of  Panama.  Full  of  these 
vivid  impressions  of  Spanish  empire,  he  turned  his 
attention  towards  the  northern  part  of  the  continent, 
in  regions  unsettled  by  the  Spaniards,  visiting  them 
first  in  1603,  under  Pont-Grave,  and  then  in  seven 
successive  voyages.  His  narratives  are  minute,  care- 
ful, and  graphic;  he  explored  river  after  river  with 
the  Indians,  eating  and  sleeping  with  them  and  re- 
cording laboriously  their  minutest  habits.  It  is  to 
his  descriptions,  beyond  any  others,  that  we  must 
look  for  faithful  pictures  of  the  Indian  absolutely  un- 
affected by  contact  with  white  men ;  and  his  voyages, 
translated  by  Dr.  C.  P.  Otis  and  published  by  the 
Prince  Society,  with  annotations  by  E.  L.  Slafter, 
have  a  value  almost  unique. 

Champlain  himself  may  be  best  described  as  a  de- 
vout and  high-minded  voyageur.  He  was  a  good 
Catholic,  and  on  some  of  his  exploring  expeditions 
he  planted  at  short  intervals  crosses  of  white  cedar 
in  token  of  his  faith ;  but  we  see  the  born  rover  through 
the  proselyting  Christian.  Look,  for  instance,  at  the 
spirit  in  which  he  dedicates  his  voyage  of  1604  to  the 
Queen  Regent: 

"Madame ,— Of  all  the  most  useful  and  excellent  arts,  that 
of  navigation  has  always  seemed  to  me  to  occupy  the  first 
place.  For  the  more  hazardous  it  is  and  the  more  numer- 
ous the  perils  and  losses  by  which  it  is  attended,  so  much  the 
more  is  it  esteemed  and  exalted  above  all  others,  being 
wholly  unsuited  to  the  timid  and  irresolute.  By  this  art 
we  obtain  knowledge  of  different  countries,  regions,  and 
realms.  By  it  we  attract  and  bring  to  our  own  land  all 
kinds  of  riches,  by  it  the  idolatry  of  paganism  is  overthrown 
and  Christianity  proclaimed  throughout  all  the  regions  of 
the  earth.  This  is  the  art  which  from  my  early  age  has 
won  my  love  and  induced  me  to  expose  myself  all  my  life 

121 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

to  the  impetuous  waves  of  the  ocean,  and  led  me  to  explore 
the  coasts  of  a  part  of  America,  especially  of  New  France, 
where  I  have  always  desired  to  see  the  lily  nourish,  and  also 
the  only  religion,  catholic,  apostolic,  and  Roman." 

Here  we  have  the  French  lilies  and  the  holy  Catho- 
lic religion  at  the  end,  but  the  impulse  of  the  voyageur 
through  all  the  rest.  We  see  here  the  born  wanderer, 
as  full  of  eagerness  as  Tennyson's  Ulysses, 

"Always  roaming  with  a  hungry  heart." 

And  when  we  compare  this  frank  and  sailor-like  ad- 
dress with  the  devout  diplomacy,  already  quoted,  of 
the  Spanish  doctor,  we  see  in  how  absolutely  different 
a  spirit  the  men  of  these  two  nations  approached  the 
American  Indians. 

Champlain  was  an  ardent  lover  of  out-door  life 
and  an  intelligent  field  naturalist,  and  the  reader 
finds  described  or  mentioned  in  his  narratives  many 
objects  now  familiar,  but  then  strange.  He  fully  de- 
scribes, for  instance,  the  gar-pike  of  western  lakes, 
he  mentions  the  moose  under  the  Algonquin  name 
"  orignac,"  the  seal  under  the  name  of  "  sea-lion,"  the 
musk-rat,  and  the  horseshoe-crab.  He  describes  al- 
most every  point  and  harbor  on  the  northeast  coast, 
giving  the  names  by  which  many  of  them  are  since 
known;  for  instance,  Mount  Desert,  which  he  calls 
Isle  des  Monts  Deserts,  meaning  simply  Desert  Moun- 
tains, so  that  the  accent  should  not  be  laid,  as  is 
often  the  case,  on  the  second  syllable.  We  know 
from  him  that  while  yet  un visited  by  white  men,  the 
Indians  of  the  Lake  Superior  region  not  only  mined 
for  copper,  but  melted  it  into  sheets  and  hammered 
it   into   shape,   making  bracelets   and   arrow-heads. 

122 


THE    FRENCH    VOYAGEURS 

Cartier,  in  1535,  had  mentioned  the  same  thing,  but 
not  so  fully.  And  all  Champlain' s  descriptions, 
whether  of  places  or  people,  have  the  value  that 
comes  of  method  and  minuteness.  When  he  ends  a 
chapter  with,  "This  is  precisely  what  I  have  seen  of 
this  northern  shore,"  or,  "  This  is  what  I  have  learned 
from  those  savages,"  we  know  definitely  where  his 
knowledge  begins  and  ends,  and  whence  he  got  his 
information. 

It  is  fortunate  for  the  picturesqueness  of  his  nar- 
rative that  he  fearlessly  ventures  into  the  regions  of 
the  supernatural,  but  always  upon  very  definite  and 
decided  testimony.  It  would  be  a  pity,  for  instance, 
to  spare  the  Gougou  from  his  pages.  The  Gougou 
was  a  terrible  monster  reported  by  the  savages  to 
reside  on  an  island  near  the  Bay  of  Chaleur.  It  was 
in  the  form  of  a  woman,  but  very  frightful,  and  so 
large  that  the  masts  of  a  tall  vessel  would  not  reach 
the  waist.  The  Gougou  possessed  pockets,  into 
which  he — or  she — used  to  put  the  Indians  when 
caught ;  and  those  who  had  escaped  said  that  a  single 
pocket  would  hold  a  ship.  From  this  receptacle  the 
victims  were  only  taken  out  to  be  eaten.  .Several 
savages  assured  Champlain  that  they  had  seen  the 
creature ;  many  had  heard  the  horrible  noises  it  made ; 
and  one  French  adventurer  had  sailed  so  near  its 
dwelling-place  as  to  hear  a  strange  hissing  from  that 
quarter,  upon  which  all  his  Indian  companions  hid 
themselves.  "What  makes  me  believe  what  they 
say,"  says  Champlain,  "is  the  fact  that  all  the  sav- 
ages in  general  fear  it,  and  tell  such  strange  things 
about  it  that  if  I  were  to  record  all  they  say  it  would 
be  regarded  as  a  myth;  but  I  hold  that  this  is  the 
dwelling-place  of  some  devil  that  torments  them  in 

123 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  above-mentioned  manner.     This  is  what  I  have 
learned  about  the  Gougou." 

Champlain  has  left  a  minute  description,  illustrated 
by  his  own  pencil,  of  his  successive  fortified  resi- 
dences— first  at  what  is  now  De  Monts  Island,  named 
originally  the  Island  of  the  Holy  Cross,  and  afterwards 
at  Port  Royal  and  Quebec.  Traces  of  the  first - 
named  encampment  have  been  found  in  some  can- 
non-balls, one  of  which  is  now  in  possession  of  the 
New  England  Historic-Genealogical  Society.  His 
journals  vividly  describe  his  winter  discomforts  in 
America,  and  the  French  devices  that  made  them  en- 
durable. He  also  gives,  as  has  been  said,  minute  de- 
scriptions of  the  Indians,  their  homes  and  their  hunt- 
ing, their  feasting  and  fighting,  their  courage  and 
superstitions.  His  relations  to  them  were,  like  those 
of  other  Frenchmen,  for  the  most  part  kindly  and 
generous.  His  most  formidable  act  of  kindness,  if  such 
it  may  be  called,  was  when  he  first  revealed  to  them 
the  terrible  power  of  fire-arms.  He  it  was,  of  all  men, 
who  began  for  them  that  series  of  lessons  in  the  mili- 
tary art  by  which  the  Frenchmen  doubled  the  terrors 
of  Indian  warfare.  Champlain  has  portrayed  vividly 
for  us  with  pen  and  pencil  the  early  stages  of  that 
alliance  which  in  later  years  made  the  phrase  "  French 
and  Indian"  the  symbol  of  all  that  was  most  to  be 
dreaded  in  the  way  of  conflict.  He  describes  pict- 
uresquely, for  instance,  an  occasion  when  he  and  his 
Algonquin  allies  marched  together  against  the  Iro- 
quois; and  his  Indians  told  him  if  he  could  only  kill 
three  particular  chiefs  for  them  they  should  win  the 
day.  Reaching  a  promontory  which  Slafter  believes 
to  have  been  Ticonderoga,  they  saw  the  Iroquois  ap- 
proaching,  with  the  three  chiefs  in  front,   wearing 

124 


THE    FRENCH    VOYAGEURS 

plumes.  Champlain  then  told  his  own  allies  that  he 
was  very  sorry  they  could  not  understand  his  lan- 
guage better,  for  he  could  teach  them  such  order  and 
method  in  attacking  their  enemies  that  they  would 
be  sure  of  victory ;  but  meanwhile  he  would  do  what 
he  could.  Then  they  called  upon  him  with  loud 
cries  to  stand  forward;  and  so,  putting  him  twenty 
paces  in  front,  they  advanced.  Halting  within  thirty 
paces  of  the  enemy,  he  rested  his  musket  against  his 
cheek  and  aimed  at  one  of  the  chiefs.  The  musket — 
a  short  weapon,  then  called  an  arquebus — was  loaded 
with  four  balls.  Two  chiefs  fell  dead,  and  another  man 
was  mortally  wounded.  The  effect  upon  the  Iroquois 
must  have  been  like  that  of  fire  from  heaven.  These 
chiefs  were  dressed  in  armor  made  of  cotton  fibre, 
and  arrow-proof,  yet  they  died  in  an  instant!  The 
courage  of  the  whole  band  gave  way,  and  when  an- 
other Frenchman  fired  a  shot  from  the  woods,  they 
all  turned  and  fled  precipitately,  abandoning  camp 
and  provisions — a  whole  tribe,  and  that  one  of  the 
bravest,  routed  by  two  shots  from  French  muskets. 
This  was  in  July,  1609. 

On  his  voyage  of  the  following  year  he  also  taught 
the  same  Indians  how  to  attack  a  fortified  place. 
Until  that  time  their  warlike  training  had  taught 
them  only  how  to  track  a  single  enemy  or  to  elude 
him ;  or  at  most,  gathered  in  solid  masses,  to  pour  in 
showers  of  arrows  furnished  with  those  sharp  stone 
heads  so  familiar  in  our  collections.  We  know  from 
descriptions  elsewhere  given  by  Champlain  that  the 
chief  strategy  of  the  Indians  lay  in  arranging  and 
combining  these  masses  of  bowmen.  This  they  plan- 
ned in  advance  by  means  of  bundles  of  sticks  a  foot 
long,  each  stick  standing  for  a  soldier,  with  larger 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

sticks  for  chiefs.  Going  to  some  piece  of  level  ground 
five  or  six  feet  square,  the  head  chief  stuck  these 
sticks  in  the  ground  according  to  his  own  judgment. 
Then  he  called  his  companions,  and  they  studied  the 
arrangements.  It  was  a  plan  of  the  battle — a  sort 
of  Indian  Krtegspiel,  like  the  German  military  game 
that  has  the  same  object.  The  warriors  studied  the 
sticks  under  the  eye  of  the  chief  and  comprehended 
the  position  each  should  occupy.  Then  they  re- 
hearsed it  in  successive  drills.  We  are  thus  able  to 
understand — what  would  otherwise  be  difficult  to 
explain — the  compact  and  orderly  array  which  Cham- 
plain's  pictures  represent. 

It  was  with  a  band  of  warriors  thus  trained  that 
Champlain  set  forth  from  Quebec,  in  June,  1610,  to 
search  for  a  camp  of  Iroquois.  The  Indian  guides 
went  first,  armed,  painted,  naked,  light-footed,  and 
five  Frenchmen  marched  after  them,  arrayed  in 
heavy  corselets  for  defence,  and  bearing  guns  and 
ammunition.  It  was  an  alliance  of  hare  and  tor- 
toise, but  in  this  case  the  hare  kept  in  front.  Cham- 
plain  describes  their  discomforts  as  they  tramped  in 
their  heavy  accoutrements  through  pathless  swamps 
with  water  reaching  to  their  knees,  far  behind  their 
impatient  leaders,  whose  track  they  found  it  hard  to 
trace.  Suddenly  they  came  upon  the  very  scene 
where  the  fight  had  begun,  and  when  the  savages 
perceived  them  "they  began  to  shout  so  that  one 
could  not  have  heard  it  thunder."  In  the  midst  of 
this  tumult  Champlain  and  his  four  companions 
approached  the  Iroquois  fortress — built  solidly  of 
large  trees  arranged  in  a  circle  —  and  coolly  be- 
gan to  fire  their  muskets  through  the  logs  at  the 
naked  savages  within.     He  thus  describes  the  scene, 

126 


THE    FRENCH    VOYAGEURS 

which  is  also  vividly  depicted  in  one  of  his  illus- 
trations : 

"You  could  see  the  arrows  fly  on  all  sides  as  thick  as  hail. 
The  Iroquois  were  astonished  at  the  noise  of  our  muskets, 
and  especially  that  the  balls  penetrated  better  than  their 
arrows.  They  were  so  frightened  at  the  effect  produced 
that,  seeing  several  of  their  companions  fall  wounded  and 
dead,  they  threw  themselves  on  the  ground  whenever  they 
heard  a  discharge,  supposing  that  the  shots  were  sure.  We 
scarcely  ever  missed  firing  two  or  three  balls  at  one  shot, 
resting  our  muskets  most  of  the  time  on  the  side  of  their 
barricade.  But  seeing  that  our  ammunition  began  to  fail, 
I  said  to  all  the  savages  that  it  was  necessary  to  break  down 
their  barricades  and  capture  them  by  storm,  and  that  in 
order  to  accomplish  this  they  must  take  their  shields,  cover 
themselves  with  them,  and  thus  approach  so  near  as  to  be 
able  to  fasten  stout  ropes  to  the  posts  that  supported  the 
barricades,  and  pull  them  down  by  main  strength,  in  that 
way  making  an  opening  large  enough  to  permit  them  to 
enter  the  fort.  I  told  them  that  we  would  meanwhile,  by 
our  musketry  fire,  keep  off  the  enemy  as  they  endeavored  to 
prevent  them  from  accomplishing  this;  also  that  a  number 
of  them  should  get  behind  some  large  trees  which  were  near 
the  barricade,  in  order  to  throw  them  down  upon  the  enemy, 
and  that  others  should  protect  them  with  their  shields,  in 
order  to  keep  the  enemy  from  injuring  them.  All  this  they 
did  very  promptly." 

Thus  were  the  military  lessons  begun — not  lessons 
in  the  use  of  fire-arms  alone,  but  in  strategy  and  of- 
fensive tactics,  to  which  the  same  class  of  instructors 
were  destined  later  to  add  an  improved  mode  of  for- 
tification. So  completely  did  Champlain  and  his 
four  Frenchmen  find  themselves  the  masters  of  the 
situation  that  when  some  young  fellows,  country- 
men of  their  own,  and  still  better  types  of  the  voy- 
ageur  than  they  themselves  were,  came  eagerly  up 

127 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  river  in  some  trading  barks  to  see  what  was  going 
on,  Champlain  at  once  ordered  the  savages  who  were 
breaking  down  the  fortress  to  stop,  "  so  that  the  new- 
comers should  have  their  share  in  the  sport."  He 
then  gave  the  guns  to  the  young  French  traders,  and 
let  them  amuse  themselves  by  shooting  down  a  few 
defenceless  Iroquois  before  the  walls  fell. 

At  last  the  fort  yielded.  "  This,  then,  is  the  victory 
obtained  by  God's  grace,"  as  Champlain  proudly  says. 
Out  of  a  hundred  defenders  only  fifteen  were  found 
alive.  All  these  were  put  to  death  by  tortures  except 
one,  whom  Champlain  manfully  claimed  for  his  share 
and  saved ;  and  he  was  perhaps  the  first  to  describe 
fully  those  frightful  cruelties  and  that  astonishing 
fortitude  which  have  since  been  the  theme  of  so 
much  song  and  story,  and  to  point  out,  moreover, 
that  in  these  refinements  of  barbarity  the  women 
exceeded  the  men.  Later  they  were  joined  on  the 
war-path  by  a  large  force  of  friendly  Indians,  ''who 
had  never  before  seen  Christians,  for  whom  they  con- 
ceived a  great  admiration."  This  admiration  was 
not  destined,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Spaniards  and  Eng- 
lish, to  undergo  a  stern  reaction,  but  it  lasted  till  the 
end  of  the  French  power  on  the  American  continent, 
and  did  a  great  deal  to  postpone  that  end.  If  the 
control  of  the  New  World  could  have  been  secured 
solely  through  the  friendship  and  confidence  of  its 
native  tribes,  North  America  would  have  been  wholly 
French  and  Roman  Catholic  to-day. 


VI 
"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

SIR  WALTER  RALEGH,  just  on  the  eve  of  his 
fall  from  greatness,  and  after  the  failure  of  nine 
successive  expeditions  to  America,  wrote  these  words : 
"I  shall  yet  live  to  see  it  an  English  nation."  He 
was  mistaken;  he  did  not  live  to  see  it,  although  his 
fame  still  lives,  and  what  he  predicted  has  in  one 
sense  come  to  pass.  The  vast  difference  that  might 
exist  between  a  merely  English  nation  and  an  Eng- 
lish-speaking nation  had  never  dawned  upon  his  mind. 
All  that  History  of  the  World  which  he  meditated  in 
the  Tower  of  London  contained  no  panorama  of 
events  so  wonderful  as  that  which  time  has  unrolled 
in  the  very  scene  of  his  labors. 

We  owe  to  Ralegh  not  merely  the  strongest  and 
most  persistent  impulse  towards  the  colonization  of 
America,  but  also  the  most  romantic  and  ideal  as- 
pects of  that  early  movement.  He  it  is  who  has 
best  described  for  us  the  charm  exercised  by  this 
virgin  soil  over  the  minds  of  cultivated  men.  Had 
he  not  sought  to  win  it  for  a  virgin  queen,  it  would 
still  have  been  ''Virginia"  to  him.  With  what  in- 
satiable delight  he  describes  the  aspects  of  nature  in 
this  New  World! 

1 '  I  never  saw  a  more  beawtifull  countrey,  nor  more  liuely 
prospectes,  hils  so  raised  heere  and  there  ouer  the  vallies, 

9  129 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  riuer  winding  into  diuers  braunches,  the  plaines  adioyn- 
ing  without  bush  or  stubble,  all  faire  greene  grasse,  the 
ground  of  hard  sand  easy  to  march  on,  eyther  for  horse  or 
foote,  the  deare  crossing  euery  path,  the  birdes  towardes  the 
euening  singing  on  euery  tree,  with  a  thousand  seueral  tunes, 
cranes  and  herons  of  white,  crimson,  and  carnation  pearch- 
ing  on  the  riuers  side,  the  ayre  fresh  with  a  gentle  easterlie 
wind,  and  euery  stone  that  we  stooped  to  take  vp  promised 
eyther  golde  or  siluer  by  his  complexion." 


Ralegh  represents  the  imaginative  and  glowing  side 
of  American  exploration — an  aspect  which,  down  to 
the  days  of  John  Smith,  remained  vividly  prominent, 
and  which  had  not  wholly  disappeared  even  under 
the  graver  treatment  of  the  Puritans. 

The  very  adventures  of  some  of  the  early  colonies 
seem  to  retain  us  in  the  atmosphere  of  those  vanish- 
ing islands  and  enchanted  cities  of  which  the  early 
English  seamen  dreamed.  Ralegh  sent  his  first  col- 
ony to  Virginia  in  1585,  under  Ralph  Lane;  in  1586 
he  sent  a  ship  with  provisions  to  their  aid,  "who, 
after  some  time  spent  in  seeking  our  colony  up  and 
down,  and  not  finding  them,  returned  with  all  the 
aforesaid  provision  unto  England,"  the  colonists  hav- 
ing really  departed  "out  of  that  paradise  of  the 
world,"  as  Hakluyt  says — in  vessels  furnished  by 
Sir  Francis  Drake.  Then  followed  Sir  Richard  Gren- 
ville  with  three  vessels;  but  he  could  find  neither 
relief -ship  nor  colony,  and  after  some  time  spent  in 
the  same  game  of  hide-and-seek,  he  landed  fifteen 
men  in  the  island  of  Roanoke,  with  two  years'  pro- 
visions, to  take  possession  of  the  country.  Then,  in 
1587,  went  three  ships  containing  a  colony  of  one 
hundred  and  fifty,  under  John  White,  with  a  char- 
tered and  organized  corps  of  twelve  assistants,  under 

130 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

the  sonorous  name  of  "Governor  and  Assistants  of 
the  City  of  Ralegh  in  Virginia."  They  looked  for 
Grenville's  fifteen  men,  but  found  them  not,  and 
found  only  deer  grazing  on  the  melons  that  had 
grown  within  the  roofless  houses  of  Lane's  colony. 
In  spite  of  these  dark  omens,  the  new  settlement  was 
formed,  and  on  the  18th  of  August,  1587— as  we  read 
in  Captain  John  Smith's  Generall  Historie  of  Virginia, 
New  England,  and  the  Summer  Isles— "  Ellinor,  the 
Governour's  daughter,  and  wife  to  Ananias  Dare,  was 
delivered  of  a  daughter,  in  Roanoak,  which,  being 
the  first  Christian  there  borne,  was  called  Virginia." 
Here  at  least  was  something  permanent,  definite,  es- 
tablished— a  birth  and  a  christening,  the  beginning 
of  "an  English  nation,"  transferred  to  American  soil. 
Alas!  in  all  this  pathetic  series  of  dissolving  hopes 
and  lost  colonies,  the  career  of  the  little  Virginia  is 
the  most  touching.  Governor  White,  going  back  to 
England  for  supplies  soon  after  the  birth  of  his  grand- 
child, left  in  the  colony  eight-nine  men,  seventeen 
women,  and  eleven  children.  He  was  detained  three 
years,  and  on  his  return,  in  August,  1590,  he  found 
no  trace  of  the  colony  except  three  letters  "curiously 
carved"  upon  a  tree — the  letters  CRO — and  else- 
where, upon  another  tree,  the  word  "CROATOAN." 
It  had  been  agreed  beforehand  that  should  the  col- 
ony be  removed,  the  name  of  their  destination  should 
be  carved  somewhere  conspicuously,  and  that  if  they 
were  in  distress  a  cross  should  be  carved  above.  These 
trees  bore  no  cross ;  but  the  condition  of  the  buildings 
and  buried  chests  of  the  colony  indicated  the  work 
of  savages.  "Though  it  much  grieved  me,"  writes 
the  anxious  and  wandering  father  in  his  narrative, 
"yet  it  did  much  comfort  me  that  I  did  know  they 

131 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

were  at  Croatoan."  Before  the  ships  could  seek  the 
island  of  Croatoan  they  were  driven  out  to  sea;  but 
apparently  those  in  charge  of  the  expedition  had  re- 
solved not  to  seek  it,  Governor  White  being  but  a 
passenger,  and  they  having  already  anchored  near 
that  island  and  seen  no  signals  of  distress.  Twenty 
years  after,  Powhatan  confessed  to  Captain  John 
Smith  that  he  had  been  at  the  murder  of  the  colonists. 
Strachey,  secretary  of  the  Jamestown  settlement, 
found  a  report  among  the  Indians  of  a  race  who 
dwelt  in  stone  houses,  which  they  had  been  taught 
to  build  by  those  English  who  had  escaped  the  slaugh- 
ter of  Roanoke — these  being  farther  specified  as 
"  fower  men,  two  boyes,  and  one  yonge  mayde,"  whom 
a  certain  chief  had  preserved  as  his  slaves.  Further- 
more, the  first  Virginia  settlers  found  at  an  Indian 
village  a  boy  of  ten,  with  yellow  hair  and  whitish 
skin,  who  may  have  been  a  descendant  of  these  ill- 
fated  survivors.  Thus  vanishes  from  history  the  last 
of  the  lost  colonies  and  every  trace  of  Virginia  Dare. 
The  first  colonists  farther  north  met  with  equal 
failure  but  less  of  tragedy.  No  children  were  born 
to  them,  no  Christian  maiden  ever  drifted  away  in 
the  unfathomable  ocean  of  Indian  mystery ;  they  con- 
sisted of  men  only,  and  this  helped  to  explain  their 
forlorn  career.  Bartholomew  Gosnold  crossed  the 
Atlantic  in  1602,  following  the  route  of  Ribaut,  who 
had  wished  to  establish  what  are  now  called  "ocean 
lanes" — at  least  so  far  as  to  keep  the  French  vessels 
away  from  the  Spaniards  by  following  a  more  north- 
ern track.  Gosnold  landed  at  Cape  Ann,  then  cross- 
ed Massachusetts  Bay  to  Provincetown,  and  built  a 
shelter  on  the  Island  of  Cuttyhunk  (called  by  him 
Elizabeth  Island),  in  Buzzard's  Bay.     His  house  was 

132 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

fortified  with  palisades,  thatched  with  sedge,  and  fur- 
nished with  a  cellar,  which  has  been  identified  in 
recent  times.  He  saw  deer  on  the  island,  but  no  in- 
habitants; and  the  soil  was  "overgrown  with  wood 
and  rubbish" — the  latter  including  sassafras,  young 
cherry-trees,  and  grape-vines.  Here  he  wintered, 
but  if  he  ever  meant  to  found  a  colony — which  is 
doubtful — it  failed  for  want  of  supplies,  and  his  vessel, 
the  Concord,  returned  with  all  on  board,  his  eight  sea- 
men and  twenty  planters,  to  England.  They  ar- 
rived there,  as  Gosnold  wrote  to  his  father,  without 
"  one  cake  of  bread,  nor  any  drink  but  a  little  vine- 
gar left."  But  he  had  a  cargo  of  sassafras  root  which 
was  worth  more  than  vinegar  or  bread,  though  it 
yielded  little  profit  to  Gosnold,  since  it  was  confis- 
cated by  Ralegh  as  sole  patentee  of  the  region  visited. 
This  fragrant  shrub,  then  greatly  prized  as  a  medi- 
cine, drew  to  America  another  expedition,  following 
after  Gosnold's,  and  headed  by  Martin  Pring.  He 
sailed  the  next  year  (1603)  with  two  vessels  and 
forty-four  men,  not  aiming  at  colonization,  but  at 
trade.  He  anchored  either  at  Plymouth  or  Edgar- 
town,  built  a  palisaded  fort  to  protect  his  sassafras- 
hunters,  but  found  the  Indians  very  inconvenient 
neighbors,  and  returned  home.  Weymouth  —  or 
Waymouth — came  two  years  later,  and  sailed  sixty 
miles  up  the  Kennebec  or  Penobscot — it  is  not  yet 
settled  which — and  pronounced  it  "the  most  rich, 
beautiful,  large,  and  secure  harboring  river  that  the 
world  afTordeth."  But  he  did  not  stay  long,  and 
except  for  his  enthusiasm  over  the  country  and  the 
fact  that  he  carried  home  five  Indians,  his  trip  count- 
ed for  no  more  than  Pring's.  Meanwhile  De  Monts 
and  Champlain  were  busy  in  exploring  on  the  part 

i33 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

of  the  French;  and  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges  was  plan- 
ning one  more  fruitless  colony  for  the  English. 

Gorges,  perhaps  a  kinsman  of  Ralegh,  knew  Wey- 
mouth, and  took  charge  for  three  years  of  some  of 
his  Indian  captives.  With  Sir  John  Popham  he  se- 
cured the  incorporation  of  two  colonies — to  be  called 
the  First  and  the  Second,  and  to  be  under  charge  of 
the  Council  of  Virginia,  appointed  by  the  crown. 
The  First,  or  London  Colony,  was  to  be  planted  in 
"South  Virginia,"  from  north  latitude  340  to  410, 
and  the  Second,  or  Plymouth  Colony,  was  to  be 
planted  in  "North  Virginia,"  between  380  and  450 
north  latitude.  The  two  colonies  thus  overlapped 
three  degrees ;  but  neither  colony  was  to  extend  more 
than  fifty  miles  inland,  and  there  was  to  be  an  inter- 
val of  a  hundred  miles  between  their  nearest  settle- 
ments. That  gap  of  a  hundred  miles  afterwards 
caused  a  great  deal  of  trouble. 

Three  ships  with  a  hundred  settlers  went  from 
Plymouth,  England,  in  1607,  reaching  the  mouth  of 
the  Sagadahoc,  or  Kennebec,  August  8th.  They  held 
religious  services  according  to  the  Church  of  England, 
read  their  patent  publicly,  and  proceeded  to  dig  wells, 
build  houses,  and  erect  a  fori;.  ,  Misfortune  pursued 
them.  Nearly  half  their  number  went  back  with  the 
vessels.  The  winter  was  unusually  severe.  Their 
storehouse  was  burned;  their  president,  George  Pop- 
ham,  died;  their  patron  in  England,  Sir  John  Pop- 
ham,  died  also;  their  "admiral,"  Ralegh  Gilbert,  was 
recalled  to  England  by  the  death  of  his  brother.  In 
the  spring  all  returned,  and  another  colony  was  add- 
ed to  the  list  of  unsuccessful  attempts.  It  is  useless 
to  speculate  on  what  might  have  been  the  difference 
in  the  destiny  of  New  England  had  it  succeeded;  it 

i34 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

failed,  and  the  world  never  cares  very  much  for  fail- 
ures. The  contemporary  verdict  was  that  "  the  coun- 
try was  branded  by  the  return  of  that  plantation  as 
being  over-cold,  and,  in  respect  of  that,  not  habitable 
for  Englishmen."  But  the  fortunate  fact  that  two 
colonies  were  sent  out  together  made  the  year  1607 
the  beginning  of  successful  colonization  in  America, 
after  all.  The  enterprise  succeeded,  not  in  New  Eng- 
land, then  called  North  Virginia,  but  in  South  Vir- 
ginia, part  of  which  territory  still  retains  the  name 
of  the  Virgin  Queen.  It  succeeded  not  under  the 
high-sounding  name  of  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges,  but 
under  the  more  plebeian  auspices  of  John  Smith. 

John  Smith  was  the  last  of  the  romantic  school  of 
explorers.  It  is  impossible  to  tell  who  wrote  all  his 
numerous  books,  or  where  to  draw  the  line  in  regard 
to  his  innumerable  adventures.  We  shall  never 
know  the  whole  truth  about  Pocahontas  or  Powhatan. 
No  matter;  he  was  the  ideal  sailor,  laboring  to  be 
accurate  in  all  that  relates  to  coasts  and  soundings, 
absolutely  credulous  as  to  all  the  wilder  aspects  of 
enterprise  in  a  new  world.  He  maintained  the  tra- 
ditions of  wonder ;  he  would  not  have  been  surprised 
at  Job  Hartop's  merman,  or  Ponce  de  Leon's  old  men 
made  young,  or  Ralegh's  headless  Indians,  or  Cham- 
plain's  Gougou.  The  flavor  of  all  his  narratives  is 
that  of  insatiable  and  joyous  adventure,  not  yet 
shadowed  by  that  awful  romance  of  supernatural 
terror  which  came  in  with  the  Puritans. 

Yet  his  first  service  was  in  his  accuracy  of  descrip- 
tion. It  is  a  singular  fact  pointed  out  by  Kohl,  that 
while  the  sixteenth  century  placed  upon  our  maps 
with  much  truth  the  coasts  of  Newfoundland,  Labra- 
dor, and  Canada,  the  coasts  of  New  England  and 

i35 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 


New  York  were  unknown  till  the  beginning  of  the 
seventeenth.  ,  When  Hudson  sailed  south  of  Cape 
Cod  and  entered  the  harbor  of  New  Yrork,  he  was 
justified  in  saying  that  he  entered  "  an  unknown  sea." 
If  the  shore  north  of  Cape  Cod  was  not  an  unknown 


Gjf 'jo fiicjira/Fcjietr Jofe  Smith  t^icb  to  bcarc) 
fjT, Ife tliy  Jwnc,to  make, Bra/?c  Steele  ou^wearc. 
(^ThintA*  thou  art  Wrtuu,  Southampton  te, 


r/  So,tf.on  art  Braf?c  wi't/wut  hut  C/oldt  tfitliin. . 


SmnHyZtuJc^Kiir.  y 

I       l      1      ■      ■     4 


MAP    OF    NEW    ENGLAND    COAST 
(From  Captain  John  Smith's  Historic  of  Virginia) 


region,  it  was  due  largely  to  Smith.  While  his  com- 
panions were  plundering  or  kidnapping  negroes,  at 
the  time  he  first  visited  those  shores,  in  1614,  he 
was  drawing  "  a  map  from  point  to  point,  isle  to  isle. 

136 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

and  harbor  to  harbor,  with  the  soundings,  sands, 
rocks,  and  landmarks."  He  first  called  the  region 
New  England,  and  first  gave  the  names  of  Charles 
River,  Plymouth,  Cape  Ann ;  while  other  titles  which 
he  bestowed— as  Boston,  Cambridge,  Hull— have  not 
disappeared,  but  only  shifted  their  places.  He  caused 
thousands  of  his  maps  to  be  printed,  and  yet  com- 
plained he  might  as  well  have  tried  "to  cut  rocks 
with  oyster  shells"  as  to  spread  among  others  his  in- 
terest in  this  matter.  Fifteen  years  after  he  could 
only  report  the  same  discouragement.  'The  coast 
is  yet  still  but  as  a  coast  unknown  and  undiscovered. 
I  have  had  six  or  seven  plots  of  those  northern  parts, 
so  unlike  each  to  other  for  resemblance  of  the  country 
as  they  did  me  no  more  good  than  so  much  waste 
paper." 

This  illustrates  Smith's  methods.  But  it  was  in 
his  first  expedition  to  Virginia  that  he  placed  himself 
on  record  as  the  first  successful  colonizer  of  America. 
At  the  time,  however,  he  would  have  claimed  no 
higher  title  than  "Adventurer,"  that  being  the  name 
by  which  the  members  of  the  London  Company  were 
known.  The  men  who  were  sent  out  on  this  expe- 
dition were  authorized  to  mine  for  the  precious  metals, 
to  coin  money,  and  to  collect  a  revenue  for  twenty-one 
years  from  all  vessels.  The  dream  of  wealth  had 
been  transplanted  from  Spain  to  England,  and  its  sup- 
posed scene  of  enrichment  from  Mexico  to  "  Virginia." 
The  English  plays  of  the  period  show  this.  "I  tell 
thee,"  says  Seagull,  in  Marston's  play  of  "Eastward, 
Ho!"  written  in  1605,  "golde  is  more  plentifull  there 
than  copper  is  with  us ;  and  for  as  much  redde  cop- 
per as  I  can  bring  I'll  have  thrise  the  weight  in  gold. 
Why,  man,  all  theyre  dripping  pans  ...  are  pure 

i37 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

gould,  and  all  the  chaines  with  which  they  chaine  up 
their  streets  are  massie  gold ;  and  for  rubies  and  dia- 
monds, they  go  forth  in  Holy  day  es  and  gather  'hem 
by  the  seashore  to  hang  on  their  children's  coates  and 
stick  in  their  children's  caps."  And,  to  complete  the 
picture,  he  promises  "no  more  law  than  conscience, 
and  not  too  much  of  eyther." 

Such  were  the  hopes  with  which  the  three  ships 
of  the  Virginia  Company  of  London  sailed  from  the 
Downs,  December  30,  1606.  It  was  a  modest  expedi- 
tion, but  it  carried  the  fortunes  of  the  "  English 
nation"  on  board.  These  vessels  were  the  Sarah 
Constant,  of  one  hundred  tons,  commanded  by  Captain 
Christopher  Newport,  fleet  captain;  the  Goodspeed, 
of  forty  tons,  Captain  Bartholomew  Gosnold ;  and  the 
Discovery,  of  about  twenty  tons,  Captain  John  Rat- 
cliffe.  The  emigrants,  or  ''planters,"  all  of  them 
men,  numbered  one  hundred  and  twenty,  more  than 
half  of  them  being  classed  as  "  gentlemen,"  together 
with  laborers,  tradesmen,  and  mechanics,  and  two 
"chirurgeons."  Sailing  by  the  southern  route — the 
way  of  the  West  Indies — they  reached  Chesapeake 
Bay  in  the  early  morning  of  April  26th,  and  there 
for  the  first  time  opened  a  sealed  box  containing  the 
orders  from  the  King.  This  box  designated  as  coun- 
cillors the  three  sea  -  captains,  with  Edward  Maria 
Wingfield  (president),  John  Smith,  John  Martin,  and 
John  Kendall.  Smith,  however,  because  of  some 
suspicion  of  mutinous  bearing  on  the  voyage,  was 
excluded  from  office  until  June  10th. 

It  is  possible  that  something  of  personal  feeling 
may  have  entered  into  Smith's  low  opinion  of  these 
first  colonists.  He  says  of  them,  in  his  General  I 
Historie : 

138 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

"  Being  for  most  part  of  such  tender  educations,  and  small 
experience  in  Martiall  accidents,  because  they  found  not 
English  Cities,  nor  such  fair  houses,  downe  pillowes,  tav- 
ernes,  and  ale-houses  in  euery  breathing  place,  neither  such 
plentie  of  gold  and  silver  and  dissolute  libertie  as  they  ex- 
pected, had  little  or  no  care  of  anything  but  to  pamper  their 
bellies,  to  fly  away  with  our  Pinnaces,  or  procure  their 
meanes  to  returne  for  England.  For  the  Country  was  to 
them,  a  misery,  a  ruine,  a  death,  a  hell,  and  their  reports 
here  and  their  actions  there  according." 

They  planted  a  cross  at  Fort  Henry,  naming  it  for 
the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  they  named  the  opposite 
cape  for  his  brother,  the  Duke  of  York,  afterwards 
Charles  I.  The  next  day  they  named  another  spot 
Point  Comfort.  Ascending  the  Powhatan  River, 
called  by  them  the  James,  they  landed  at  a  peninsula 
about  fifty  miles  from  the  mouth,  and  resolved  to 
build  their  town  there.  They  went  to  work,  sending 
Smith  and  others  farther  up  the  river  to  explore,  and 
repelling  the  first  Indian  attack  during  their  absence. 
In  June,  Newport  sailed  for  England,  leaving  three 
months'  provisions  for  the  colonists.  Again  the  ex- 
periment was  to  be  tried;  again  Englishmen  found 
themselves  alone  in  the  New  World.  Captain  John 
Smith,  always  graphic,  has  left  a  vivid  picture  of  the 
discomforts  of  that  early  time : 

"When  I  first  went  to  Virginia,  I  well  remember,  wee  did 
hang  an  awning  (which  is  an  old  saile)  to  three  or  foure  trees 
to  shadow  us  from  the  Sunne,  our  walls  were  rales  of  wood, 
our  seats  unhewed  trees,  till  we  cut  plankes,  our  Pulpit  a  bar 
of  wood  nailed  to  two  neighboring  trees,  in  foule  weather  we 
shifted  into  an  old  rotten  tent,  for  we  had  few  better,  and 
this  came  by  the  way  of  adventure  for  new;  this  was  our 
Churcn,  till  wee  built  a  homely  thing  like  a  barne,  set  upon 
Cratchets,  covered  with  rafts,  sedge,  and  earth,  so  was  also 

139 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  walls:  the  best  of  our  houses  of  the  like  curiosity,  but 
the  most  part  farre  much  worse  workmanship,  that  could 
neither  well  defend  wind  nor  raine,  yet  wee  had  daily  Com- 
mon Prayer  morning  and  evening,  every  Sunday  two  Ser- 
mons, and  every  three  moneths  the  holy  Communion,  till  our 
Minister  died,  but  our  Prayers  daily,  with  an  Homily  on 
Sundaies  we  continued  two  or  three  yeares  after  till  more 
Preachers  came,  and  surely  God  did  most  mercifully  heare 
us,  till  the  continuall  inundations  of  mistaking  directions, 
factions,  and  numbers  of  unprovided  Libertines  neere  con- 
sumed us  all,  as  the  Israelites  in  the  wildernesse." 

The  place  was  unhealthy ;  they  found  no  gold ;  the 
savages  were  hostile ;  by  September  one-half  of  their 
own  number  had  died,  including  Gosnold,  and  their 
provisions  were  almost  exhausted.  The  council  was 
reduced  to  three — Ratcliffe,  Smith,  and  Martin. 
Later  still  their  settlement  was  burned,  and  their 
food  reduced  to  meal  and  water;  the  intrepid  leader- 
ship of  Smith  alone  saved  them ;  and  for  months  the 
colony  struggled,  as  did  the  Plymouth  colony  a  dozen 
years  later,  for  mere  existence.  Its  materials  from 
the  beginning  were  strangely  put  together — one 
mason,  one  blacksmith,  four  carpenters,  fifty-two 
gentlemen,  and  a  barber!  The  "first  supply"  in 
1608  brought  one  hundred  and  twenty  more,  but  not 
in  much  better  combination — thirty-three  gentle- 
men, twenty-one  laborers,  six  tailors,  with  apothe- 
caries, perfumers,  and  goldsmiths,  but  still  only  one 
mechanic  of  the  right  sort.  The  "second  supply," 
in  the  same  year,  brought  seventy  persons,  including 
"eight  Dutchmen  and  Poles";  and,  best  of  all,  two 
women — Mistress  Forrest  and  Anne  Burras  her  maid 
— joined  the  company ;  and  soon  after  the  maid  was 
married  to  John  Lay  don,  "which  was  the  first  "mar- 
riage," Smith  triumphantly  says,   "we  had  in  Vir- 

140 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

ginia."  Smith  had  by  this  time  become  President 
of  the  Council,  and  was  at  last  its  only  member. 
They  had  received  supplies  from  England,  but  the 
continuance  of  these  was  very  uncertain.     Newport 


MAP    OF    JAMESTOWN    SETTLEMENT 
(From  Captain  John  Smith's  Htstorie  of  Virginia) 


on  his  return  trip  had  foolishly  pledged  himself  not 
to  return  without  a  lump  of  gold,  the  discovery  of  a 
passage  to  the  North  Sea,  some  of  the  settlers  of  the 
lost  colony,  or  a  freight  worth  £2000.     Unless  this 

141 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

pledge  was  fulfilled,  the  colony  was  to  be  abandoned 
to  its  own  resources ;  and  fulfilled  it  never  was. 

Early  in  October,  1609,  Smith  sailed  for  England, 
leaving  nearly  five  hundred  settlers,  with  horses,  cat- 
tle, cannon,  fishing-nets,  and  provisions.  He  never 
returned,  though  he  made  a  successful  voyage  to  New 
England.  He  apparently  went  away  under  a  cloud, 
but  with  him  went  the  fortunes  of  the  colony.  There 
followed  a  period  known  as  "the  starving  time," 
which  ended  in  the  abandonment  of  the  settlement, 
with  its  fifty  or  sixty  houses  and  its  defence  of  pali- 
sades. The  colonists  were  met  as  they  descended  the 
river,  in  April,  16 10,  by  Lord  Delaware  (or  De  la 
Warr)  as  he  ascended  with  another  party  of  settlers ; 
and  thenceforward  the  Virginia  settlement  was  se- 
cure. Yet  it  did  not  grow  rapidly;  it  was  languish- 
ing in  16 1 8,  and  it  had  an  accession  of  doubtful  bene- 
fit in  1 619,  when  we  read  in  Smith's  Generall  Historie, 
as  the  statement  of  John  Rolfe,  "About  the  last  of 
August  came  in  a  Dutch  man-of-warre,  and  sold  us 
twenty  Negars."  In  162 1  came  a  more  desirable  ac- 
cession, through  the  shipment  by  the  company  of 
"respectable  young  women"  for  wives  of  those  col- 
onists who  would  pay  the  cost  of  transportation — at 
first  one  hundred  and  twenty  pounds  of  tobacco, 
afterwards  one  hundred  and  fifty.  In  July,  1620, 
the  colony  was  four  thousand  strong,  and  shipped  to 
England  forty  thousand  pounds  of  tobacco.  This 
was  raised  with  the  aid  of  many  bound  apprentices 
— boys  and  girls  picked  up  in  the  streets  of  London 
and  sent  out — and  of  many  "disorderly  persons" 
sent  by  order  of  the  King.  But  in  the  year  1624  only 
1275  colonists  were  left  in  Virginia. 

The   colony   would    have   been   more   prosperous, 

142 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

Captain  John  Smith  thought,  without  the  tobacco. 
"Out  of  the  relicks  of  our  miseries,"  he  says,  "time 
and  experience  had  brought  that  country  to  a  great 
happinesse,  had  they  not  so  much  doted  on  their  to- 
bacco, on  whose  firmest  foundations  there  is  small 
stability,  there  being  so  many  good  commodities  be- 
side. "  But  their  chief  trouble,  as  he  wrote  from 
London  in  163 1 — the  last  year  of  his  life — was  al- 
ways in  the  uncertain  sway  of  the  Virginia  Company 
in  London:  "Their  purses  and  lives  were  subject  to 
some  few  here  in  London,  who  were  never  there,  that 
consumed  all  in  Arguments,  Projects,  Conclusions, 
altering  everything  yearely,  as  they  altered  opinions, 
till  they  had  consumed  more  than  £200,000  and 
neere  8000  men's  lives." 

Another  voyager,  also  English,  but  in  Dutch  em- 
ploy, following  Smith  across  the  ocean,  rivalled  his 
fame.  It  was  a  wondrous  period,  certainly,  when  a 
continent  lay  unexplored  before  civilized  men,  and  a 
daring  navigator  could  at  a  single  voyage  add  to  the 
map  a  whole  mighty  river,  whereas  now  it  sometimes 
takes  many  lives  to  establish  a  few  additional  facts  as 
to  the  minor  sources  of  some  well-known  stream. 
The  name  of  Henry  Hudson  is  as  indelibly  associated 
with  the  river  he  discovered  as  is  the  Rhine  with  the 
feudal  castles  that  make  its  summits  picturesque. 
The  difference  is  that  after  the  last  stone  of  the  last 
ruin  has  crumbled,  the  name  of  the  great  navigator 
will  be  as  permanent  as  now.  While  Hudson  was 
exploring  what  he  called  "  The  Great  North  River  of 
New  Netherland,"  Champlain  was  within  a  few 
miles  of  him,  on  the  lake  that  was  to  bear  his  name. 
Both  he  and  Hudson  were  fortunate  enough  to  have 
names  sufficiently  characteristic  to  keep  their  places 

143 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

on  the  map,  while  "  Smith's  Isles"  soon  yielded  to  the 
yet  vaguer  appellation  of  the  "  Isles  of  Shoals." 

It  has  been  well  pointed  out  in  a  sketch  of  the 
Dutch  in  America- -that  of  Mr.  Fernow,  in  the  Nar- 
rative and  Critical  History  of  America,  edited  by  Jus- 
tin Winsor — that  the  early  Dutch  explorations  did 
not  proceed  from  the  love  of  discovery  or  of  gold- 
seeking,  but  were  an  incident  of  European  wars. 
Carlyle  says  that  the  Dutch  might  have  kept  on  mak- 
ing butter  and  cheese  forever  had  not  the  Spaniards 
hurried  them  into  a  war  in  order  to  make  them  be- 
lieve in  St.  Ignatius.  The  Spaniards,  he  says,  "  never 
made  them  believe  in  him,  but  succeeded  in  breaking 
their  own  vertebral  column  and  raising  the  Dutch 
into  a  great  nation."  The  Dutch  West  India  Com- 
pany was,  according  to  Mr.  Fernow,  a  political  move- 
ment, planned  in  1606  and  revived  in  1618 — a  scheme 
to  destroy  the  results  of  Spanish  conquest  in  America, 
under  cover  of  finding  a  passage  to  Cathay. 

Henry  Hudson  sailed  in  the  employ  of  this  com- 
pany, in  the  vessel  Half -Moon,  April  4,  1609.  He 
undertook  the  search  for  a  northwest  passage — to 
which  there  was  an  opening  north  of  Virginia,  as  his 
friend  Captain  John  Smith  had  assured  him.  Sail- 
ing up  the  river  which  now  bears  his  name,  he  found 
no  passage,  but  brought  back  reports  of  fur-bearing 
animals,  which  revived  the  Dutch  Company  and  se- 
cured for  it  a  charter,  granted  in  162 1.  Before  this 
Adrian  Block  had  built  a  log  fort  on  Manhattan  Isl- 
and, in  1 6 14,  and  had  called  the  settlement  New  Am- 
sterdam; another  fort  was  built  near  what  is  now 
Albany ;  another  in  what  is  now  Gloucester,  New  Jer- 
sey; and  in  1626  Peter  Minuit  bought  the  whole  of 
Manhattan  Island  from  the  Indians.     All  these  set- 

144 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

tlements  were  supposed  to  be  within  the  hundred 
miles  which  were  to  separate  the  North  and  South 
Virginia  settlements.  The  South  Virginia  colonists 
tried  to  drive  out  the  Dutch  in  1613,  and  Governor 
Bradford,  in  Plymouth,  remonstrated  in  1627  against 
the  intruders,  but  they  remained.  The  secret  belief 
of  the  Dutch  was  fhat,  after  all,  the  English  had  se- 
cured only  the  two  shells,  while  they  had  the  oyster. 
For  years  the  colony  was  rather  like  a  commercial 
enterprise  than  like  anything  of  larger  expectations; 
but  after  a  time,  under  the  teaching  of  experience,  a 
more  liberal  policy  was  practised,  and  settlers  came 
from  many  sources — dissatisfied  religionists  from  New 
England,  escaped  servants  from  Virginia,  and  rich 
and  poor  from  Holland.  In  1643  there  were  eighteen 
different  nationalities  represented  in  New  Amster- 
dam. 

The  English  had  thus  obtained  a  foothold  in  Vir- 
ginia, and  the  Dutch  had  established  themselves  in 
New  Netherland,  both  being  led  by  the  love  of  dis- 
covery, or  of  trade,  or  of  revenge  against  the  Span- 
iards. All  efforts  had  thus  far  failed  to  build  a  col- 
ony in  New  England.  Captain  Smith  wrote  that  he 
was  not  so  foolish  as  to  suppose  that  anything  but 
the  prospect  of  great  gain  would  induce  people  to 
settle  in  such  a  place.  He  was  right;  it  was  done 
with  the  prospect  of  great  gain,  but  of  a  kind  of 
which  he  had  not  dreamed.  It  is  partly  this  new 
motive  and  partly  the  pivotal  part  it  played  in  the 
colonization  of  America  that  has  always  given  to  the 
little  colony  of  Plymouth  an  historic  importance  out 
of  all  proportion  to  its  numbers,  its  wealth,  or  even 
its  permanence  of  separate  life. 

The  Pilgrims,  as  they  have  been  always  called,  had 

145 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

separated  for  conscience'  sake  from  the  Church  of 
England,  had  removed  from  England  to  Holland,  and 
had  dwelt  there  in  that  "common  harbor  of  all  her- 
esies," as  Bishop  Hall  called  it,  there  increasing  to 
the  number  of  five  hundred.  The  Dutch  magistrates 
said,  "These  English  have  lived  among  us  now  these 
twelve  years,  and  yet  we  have  never  had  any  suit 
or  accusation  against  them."  But  it  seemed  likely 
that  the  wars  between  Spain  and  Holland  would  be 
renewed,  making  their  place  of  refuge  unsafe;  and 
the  children  of  the  Pilgrims  were  growing  up,  whom 
their  parents  wished  to  hear  speaking  English  rather 
than  Dutch;  and  they  desired  also  to  do  something 
"for  the  propagating  and  advancing  of  the  Gospel  of 
Christ  in  the  remote  parts  of  the  world."  So  a  hun- 
dred of  their  younger  and  stronger  men  and  women 
were  selected  to  go  to  America,  and  a  portion  of  them 
sailed  from  Delft  Haven  in  July,  1620;  their  pious 
minister,  John  Robinson,  invoking  a  blessing  upon 
their  departure,  and  warning  them,  "The  Lord  hath 
more  truth  yet  to  seek  out  of  His  holy  Word."  Of 
their  two  ships,  the  Mayflower  alone  completed  her 
voyage,  and  after  touching  at  three  English  ports 
she  still  had  a  voyage  of  sixty-three  days.  The 
Speedwell  put  back  in  consequence  of  alarms  need- 
lessly spread  by  her  captain,  who  had  already  re- 
pented of  his  promise  to  remain  a  year  with  the 
colony,  and  took  this  cowardly  way  to  obtain  relief 
from  that  pledge. 

On  the  eastern  coast  of  Massachusetts  there  is  a 
cape  which  stretches  far  into  the  sea,  "shaped  like  a 
sickle,"  as  Captain  John  Smith  said,  but  named  less 
poetically  "Cape  Cod"  by  Gosnold,  because  of  the 
multitudes  of  fish  with  which  he  had  "pestered"  his 

146 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

vessel  there.  If  on  the  9th  of  November  (Old  Style), 
in  1620,  any  stray  Indian  had  been  looking  from  the 
bluff  where  Highland  Light  now  stands,  he  would  have 
seen  a  lonely  and  weather-beaten  vessel  creeping 
slowly  towards  the  land.  It  was  the  Mayflower,  now 
more  than  two  months  at  sea.  She  had  met  with 
such  storms  and  had  grown  so  leaky  that  it  had  been 
seriously  proposed  by  the  sailors,  when  half  across 
the  Atlantic,  to  return.  But  for  the  fact  that  some 
passenger  had  happened  to  bring  a  great  iron  screw 
with  his  baggage,  it  is  doubtful  if  the  little  vessel  could 
have  made  the  passage.  As  it  was,  she  was  heavy 
and  slow,  and  the  passengers  were  full  of  joy  when 
they  saw  Cape  Cod.  They  very  well  knew  what  land 
it  was,  for  the  mates  of  the  vessel  had  been  there 
twiee  before,  while  one  passenger  had  actually  been 
as  far  as  Virginia.  But  they  did  not  mean  to  re- 
main at  Cape  Cod,  or  indeed  in  New  England  at  all. 
Ever  since  the  failure  of  the  Popham  colony  in 
Maine,  twelve  years  before,  New  England  had  been 
thought  to  be  a  "cold,  barren,  mountainous,  rocky 
desert,"  and  had  been  abandoned  as  "uninhabitable 
by  Englishmen."  So  the  Mayflower  did  not  at  first 
anchor  at  Cape  Cod,  but  tacked  and  sailed  south- 
ward for  half  a  day,  meaning  to  reach  the  Hudson 
River.  Then  she  got  among  dangerous  shoals  and 
currents,  the  wind,  moreover,  being  contrary ;  and  the 
captain,  anxious  for  his  vessel  and  in  a  hurry  to  land 
his  passengers,  put  about  again  and  made  Cape  Cod 
Harbor. 

"But  here  I  cannot  but  stay  and  make  a  pause," 
says  the  old  writer  who  first  describes  this  voyage, 
"and  stand  half  amazed  at  these  poor  people's  con- 
dition; and  so  I  think  will  the  reader,  too,  when  he 

i47 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATEb 

well  considers  the  same.  For  having  passed  through 
many  troubles,  both  before  and  upon  the  voyage,  as 
aforesaid,  they  had  now  no  friends  to  welcome  them, 
nor  inns  to  entertain  and  refresh  them,  no  houses, 
much  less  towns,  to  repair  unto."  Before  them  lay 
an  unknown  wilderness.  The  nearest  English  set- 
tlement was  five  hundred  miles  away.  They  had 
expected  to  arrive  in  September,  and  it  was  Novem- 
ber; they  had  expected  to  reach  the  Hudson  River, 
and  it  was  Cape  Cod.  "Summer  being  done,"  says 
the  same  writer — Bradford — "all  things  stand  for 
them  to  look  upon  with  a  weather-beaten  face;  and 
the  whole  country  being  full  of  woods  and  thickets, 
represented  a  wild  and  savage  hue.  If  they  looked 
behind  them  there  was  the  mighty  ocean  which  they 
had  passed,  and  was  now  a  main  bar  and  gulf  to 
separate  them  from  all  the  civil  parts  of  the  world." 
To  be  sure,  they  had  still  a  ship;  but  the  captain 
warned  them  daily  that  they  must  look  out  for  a 
place  to  found  their  colony;  that  he  could  wait  but 
little  longer;  that  the  provisions  were  diminishing 
every  day,  and  he  must  and  would  keep  enough  for 
himself  and  crew  to  use  on  their  return.  Some  of  the 
crew  were  even  less  friendly  in  what  they  said,  for 
some  of  these  were  heard  to  threaten  that  unless  the 
place  for  their  new  colony  were  soon  found,  "they 
would  turn  them  and  their  goods  on  shore  and  leave 
them." 

Such  was  the  position  of  the  Pilgrims  when  the 
Mayflower  lay  at  anchor  in  Cape  Cod  Harbor.  The 
first  thing  to  be  done  was  to  select  a  place  for  their 
settlement.  This,  however,  could  not  be  done  till 
the  shallop,  or  sail-boat,  was  ready;  and  it  would 
take  several  days,  as  they  found.     So  they  went  to 

148 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

wont  on  this,  and  meanwhile,  for  the  sake  of  a  mu- 
tual understanding  among  themselves,  this  agree- 
ment was  drawn  up  and  signed  by  all  the  men  on 
board : 

"In  the  name  of  God,  Amen.  We,  whose  names  are  un- 
derwritten, the  loyall  subiects  of  our  dread  soveraigne  lord, 
King  James,  by  the  grace  of  God,  of  Great  Britaine,  France, 
and  Ireland  King,  Defender  of  the  Faith,  etc.,  having 
undertaken  for  the  glory  of  God  and  the  advancement  of 
the  Christian  faith,  and  honour  of  our  King  and  country, 
a  voyage  to  plant  the  first  colony  in  the  northerne  parts 
of  Virginia,  doe,  by  these  presents,  solemnly  and  mutually, 
in  the  presence  of  God  and  one  of  another,  covenant  and 
combine  ourselves  together  into  a  civill  body  politike,  for 
our  better  ordering  and  preservation,  and  furtherance  of 
the  ends  aforesaid;  and  by  vertue  hereof  to  enact,  constitute, 
and  frame  such  iust  and  equal  lawes,  ordinances,  acts,  con- 
stitutions, and  offices,  from  time  to  time,  as  shall  be  thought 
most  meet  and  convenient  for  the  generall  good  of  the  Col- 
ony; vnto  which  we  promise  all  due  submission  and  obedi- 
ence. In  witnesse  whereof  we  haue  hereunto  subscribed 
our  names.  Cape  Cod,  n  of  November,  in  the  year  of  the 
raigne  of  our  soveraigne  lord  King  lames,  of  England,  France, 
and  Ireland  18,  and  of  Scotland  54.     Anno  Domini  1620." 

Here  was  the  "social  compact"  in  good  earnest — 
a  thing  which  philosophers  have  claimed  to  be  im- 
plied in  all  human  government,  but  which  has  rarely 
been  put  in  a  shape  so  unequivocal.  Robinson's  let- 
ter of  advice  to  the  company  had  recognized  before 
they  left  Holland  that  they  were  "to  become  a  body- 
politic,"  using  among  themselves  civil  government 
and  choosing  their  own  rulers.  As  with  most  per- 
sons who  write  important  documents,  their  work  seem- 
ed less  imposing  to  themselves  than  it  has  since  ap- 
peared to  others.  They  thought  of  discipline  rather 
than  of  philosophy ;  they  had  secured  a  good  working 

149 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

organization,  and  it  was  not  till  long  after  that  the 
act  was  heralded  as  "the  birth  of  popular  constitu- 
tional liberty."  Such  as  it  was,  it  was  signed  by 
forty-one  men,  mostly  heads  of  families.  Against 
each  name  was  placed  the  number  represented  by 
him,  making  a  total  of  one  hundred  and  one  persons, 
though  revised  estimates  give  one  or  two  more. 

This  being  signed,  the  people  were  eager  to  go  on 
shore  and  examine  the  new  country,  even  by  ventur- 
ing a  little  way.  So  a  party  landed  for  fuel,  a  por- 
tion of  them  being  armed;  they  saw  neither  person 
nor  house,  but  brought  home  a  boat-load  of  juniper 
boughs,  "which  smelled  very  sweet  and  strong,"  and 
which  became  a  frequent  fuel  with  them.  Then  the 
women  went  ashore  under  guard  the  next  Monday  to 
do  their  washing,  and  we  may  well  suppose  that  some 
of  the  twenty-eight  children  begged  hard  to  go  also, 
and  offered  much  desultory  aid.  in  bringing  water, 
while  the  men  guarded  and  the  women  scrubbed. 
The  more  they  knew  of  the  land,  the  more  they 
wished  to  know,  and  at  last  it  was  agreed  that  Cap- 
tain Miles  Standish  and  sixteen  men,  "with  every 
man  his  musket,  sword,  and  corselet,"  should  be 
sent  along  the  cape  to  explore.  The  muskets  were 
matchlocks,  and  the  corselet  was  a  coat  of  mail,  a 
heavy  garment  to  be  worn  amid  tangled  woods  and 
over  weary  sands. 

The  journal  kept  by  this  first  party  has  been  pre- 
served. They  found  walnuts,  strawberries,  and  vines, 
and  came  to  some  springs,  where  they  sat  down  and 
drank  their  first  New  England  water,  as  one  of  them 
says,  "with  as  much  delight  as  ever  we  drunk  drink 
in  all  our  lives."  They  saw  no  Indians,  but  found 
their  houses  and  graves;  they  found  also  a  basket 

l5° 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

holding  three  or  four  bushels  of  Indian -corn  of  yel- 
low, red,  and  blue,  such  as  still  grows  on  Cape  Cod. 
This  they  took  with  them  on  their  return,  meaning 
to  pay  for  it,  which  they  afterwards  did.  Then  they 
returned,  and  a  few  days  after  another  party,  twice 
as  large,  and  including  the  captain  of  the  Mayflower, 
set  off  in  the  shallop  to  make  further  explorations. 
All  their  adventures  are  preserved  to  us  in  the  most 
graphic  way  by  contemporary  narratives.  Then  a 
third  party  of  eighteen  went  out,  including  Carver, 
Standish,  Bradford,  and  other  leading  men.  They 
were  attacked  by  Indians ;  they  lost  their  rudder  and 
their  mast;  they  drifted  at  last  on  Clark's  Island, 
kept  the  Sabbath  there,  and  on  December  nth,  Old 
Style — commonly  reckoned,  but  not  quite  accurately, 
as  corresponding  to  December  2  2d,  New  Style — they 
made  their  first  landing  on  Plymouth  Rock.  This 
place  being  approved,  they  returned  to  the  May- 
flower, and  the  vessel  came  into  harbor  five  days 
later. 

There  they  spent  the  winter — their  first  experience 
of  a  New  England  winter!  They  were  ill  housed,  ill 
fed ;  part  of  them  remained  for  several  months  on  board 
the  ship ;  one-half  of  them  died  during  the  first  winter 
of  scurvy  and  other  diseases.  At  times,  according 
to  the  diary  of  the  heroic  Bradford,  there  were  but 
six  or  seven  sound  persons  who  could  tend  upon  the 
sick  and  dying,  "fetched  them  wood,  made  them  fires, 
dressed  them  meat,  made  their  beds,  washed  their 
loathsome  clothes,  clothed  and  unclothed  them,"  two 
of  these  nurses  being  their  spiritual  and  military  lead- 
ers, Elder  Brewster  and  Captain  Miles  Standish.  The 
New  Plymouth  Colony  never  grew  to  be  a  strong  one ; 
its  later  history  is  merged  in  that  of  the  Massachusetts 

*5* 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Bay  Colony;  but  its  success  may  be  said  to  have  been 
the  turning-point  in  the  existence  of  Ralegh's  ''Eng- 
lish nation."  The  situation  is  thus  briefly  stated  by 
the  ablest  historian  who  wrote  in  this  continent  be- 
fore the  Revolution,  Governor  Hutchinson: 

"These  were  the  founders  of  the  colony  of  Plymouth. 
The  settlement  of  this  colony  occasioned  the  settlement  of 
Massachusetts  Bay,  which  was  the  source  of  all  the  other 
colonies  of  New  England.  Virginia  was  in  a  dying  state, 
and  seemed  to  revive  and  flourish  from  the  example  of  New 
England.  I  am  not  preserving  from  oblivion  the  names  of 
heroes  whose  chief  merit  is  the  overthrow  of  cities,  prov- 
inces, and  empires,  but  the  names  of  the  founders  of  a  flour- 
ishing town  and  colony,  if  not  of  the  whole  British  empire 
in  America." 


In  September,  1628,  there  came  sailing  into  the 
harbor  of  Naumkeag,  afterwards  called  Salem,  a  ship 
bearing  John  Endicott,  one  of  the  six  patentees  of 
the  "Dorchester  Company,"  afterwards  enlarged  into 
the  "Governor  and  Company  of  Massachusetts  Bay." 
Endicott  had  been  appointed  governor,  and  found  on 
shore  only  a  few  settlers,  Roger  Conant  and  others, 
part  of  them  strays  from  Plymouth,  who  were  quite 
disposed  to  be  impatient  of  his  authority.  There  re- 
mains no  record  of  his  voyage,  but  an  ample  record  of 
that  of  his  successor  in  the  emigration,  Rev.  Francis 
Higginson,  who  came  as  the  spiritual  leader — with 
his  colleague  Skelton — of  the  first  large  party  of  the 
Massachusetts  Bay  Colony.  They  came  in  summer 
(1629),  and  all  their  early  impressions  were  in  poetic 
contrast  to  the  stern  landing  of  the  Pilgrims.  Francis 
Higginson  says,  in  his  journal  as  preserved  in  Hutch- 
inson's Collection: 

*52 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

"By  noon  we  were  within  three  leagues  of  Cape  Ann;  and 
as  we  sailed  along  the  coasts  we  saw  every  hill  and  dale  and 
every  island  full  of  gay  woods  and  high  trees.  The  nearer 
we  came  to  the  shore  the  more  flowers  in  abundance,  some- 
times scattered  abroad,  sometimes  joined  in  sheets  nine  or 
ten  yards  long,  which  we  supposed  to  be  brought  from  the  low 
meadows  by  the  tide.  Now  what  with  fine  woods  and  green 
trees  by  land,  and  these  yellow  flowers  painting  the  sea, 
made  us  all  desirous  to  see  our  new  paradise  of  New  Eng- 
land, whence  we  saw  such  forerunning  signals  of  fertility 
afar  off." 

There  came  in  this  expedition  five  (or  possibly 
six)  ships,  of  which  the  Mayflower  was  one.  They 
brought  two  hundred  persons,  whereas  only  some 
forty  had  arrived  with  Endicott;  in  the  following 
year  eight  hundred  came  with  Winthrop,  who,  being 
governor  of  the  company  itself,  superseded  all  other 
authorities.  It  was  the  most  powerful  body  of  col- 
onists that  had  yet  reached  America.  Its  members 
were  by  no  means  limited  to  Salem,  nor  did  this  long 
remain  the  centre  of  the  colony.  Charlestown  was 
settled  in  1629,  and  Dorchester,  Roxbury,  Boston, 
Medford,  Watertown,  and  Cambridge  in  1630. 

The  company  itself  was  soon  transplanted  bodily 
from  England.  It  was  an  organized  government 
under  a  royal  charter ;  the  freemen  were  to  meet  four 
times  a  year  and  choose  a  governor,  deputy-governor, 
and  eighteen  assistants,  who  were  to  meet  once  a 
month,  and  exercise  all  the  functions  of  a  State.  As 
Henry  Cabot  Lodge  has  tersely  said,  "It  was  the 
migration  of  a  people,  not  the  mere  setting  forth  of 
colonists  and  adventurers."  Considered  as  a  colony, 
it  was  far  larger  and  richer  than  that  at  Plymouth; 
it  had  chosen  a  more  favorable  situation,  and  it  en- 
countered   less    of    hardship,    though   it    had    quite 

r53 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

enough.  Its  leaders  had  not  expected,  in  advance, 
to  break  with  the  Church  of  England,  as  had  been 
done  by  the  "Separatists"  at  Plymouth.  "We  will 
not  say,"  said  Francis  Higginson,  on  looking  back  to 
the  receding  shores  of  England — "we  will  not  say, 
as  the  Separatists  were  wont  to  say  at  their  leaving 
of  England,  'Farewell,  Babylon!  farewell,  Rome!' 
but  we  will  say,  '  Farewell,  dear  England !  farewell, 
the  Church  of  God  in  England,  and  all  the  Christian 
friends  there.'  .  .  .  We  go  to  practise  the  positive  part 
of  Church  reformation,  and  to  propagate  the  Gospel 
in  America." 

Yet,  when  once  established  on  this  soil,  there  was 
not  much  difference  in  degree  of  independence  be- 
tween the  two  colonies.  Indeed,  Endicott,  when  he 
sent  back  two  turbulent  Churchmen  to  England — or 
when  he  defaced  the  cross,  then  deemed  idolatrous, 
upon  the  English  flag — or  when  he  suppressed  Mor- 
ton and  his  roisterers  at  Merry  Mount — went  farther 
in  the  assertion  of  separate  power  than  the  milder 
authorities  of  Plymouth  Colony  ever  went.  Both 
colonies  aimed  at  religious  reformation.  Neither  col- 
ony professed  religious  toleration,  though  the  Plym- 
outh Colony  sometimes  practised  it.  Rhode  Isl- 
and, on  its  establishment  by  Roger  Williams,  both 
professed  and  practised  it;  and  though  his  banish- 
ment from  Massachusetts  was  not  on  religious  grounds 
alone,  but  partly  from  his  contentious  spirit  in  other 
ways,  yet  it  resulted  in  good  to  the  world,  at  last, 
through  his  high  conceptions  of  religious  liberty.  In 
the  New  Hampshire  settlements,  which  were  formed 
as  early  as  1623,  there  wras  less  of  strictness  in  religion, 
and  perhaps  less  of  religion;  nor  was  there  ever  any 
great  rigidity  of  doctrine  or  practice  in  the  few  scat- 

T54 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

tered  villages  of  Maine.  The  two  Connecticut  colo- 
nies—Connecticut and  New  Haven— being  framed  at 
first  by  the  direct  emigration  of  whole  religious  socie- 
ties, might  have  been  supposed  to  carry  some  severity 
with  them  into  their  banishment ;  but  they  seemed  to 
leave  it  behind,  and  were  not  sterner  at  the  outset 
than  the  men  of  the  other  early  settlements,  even 
those  of  Virginia.  What  changes  came  over  this 
type  of  manhood  in  the  second  generation,  in  the 
banishment  of  a  colony  and  the  asceticism  of  a  life 
too  restricted,  we  shall  see.  But  these  New  England 
men  were,  at  the  outset,  of  as  high  a  mould  as  ever 
settled  a  state.  "God  sifted  a  whole  nation,"  said 
Stoughton,  "that  He  might  send  choice  grain  over 
into  this  wilderness."  Between  the  years  1629  and 
1639  twenty  thousand  Puritans  came  to  America;  it 
was  not  a  mere  colonization,  it  was  the  transfer  of  a 

people. 

Thus  were  four  colonies  established  on  the  North 
Atlantic  coast  before  the  year  1630,  in  the  vast  region 
once  called  Virginia.  Three  of  them  were  English 
at  the  beginning— Virginia,  New  Plymouth,  and 
Massachusetts  Bay— and  the  other  was  destined  to 
become  such,  changing  its  name  from  New  Nether- 
land  to  New  York.  These  may  be  called  the  pioneer 
colonies;  and  if  we  extend  our  view  to  the  year  1650, 
we  take  in  three  other  colonies,  Connecticut,  Rhode 
Island,  New  Haven— which  had  gone  forth  from  these 
—while  two  independent  colonies,  one  English  and 
one  Swedish,  had  made  separate  settlements  in  Mary- 
land and  Delaware ;  thus  making  nine  in  all,  of  which 
seven  were  English. 

The  men  of  the  Maryland  settlement  also  called 
themselves,  like  those  of  Plymouth,  "Pilgrims,"  but 

155 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  name  had  not  come  to  them  by  such  arduous  ex- 
perience, and  it  has  not  attached  itself  to  their  de- 
scendants. The  Roman  Catholics  and  others  who 
came  to  "  Mary's  Land"  in  the  Ark  and  the  Dove,  in 
March,  1634,  under  Leonard  Calvert,  named  their 
first  settlement  St.  Mary's,  in  honor  of  Queen  Hen- 
rietta Maria,  and  they  called  themselves  "the  Pil- 
grims of  St.  Mary's."  The  emigration  was  made  up 
very  differently  from  those  which  John  Smith  re- 
corded in  Virginia,  for  it  consisted  of  but  twenty 
"  gentlemen"  and  three  hundred  laboring  men.  They 
came  under  a  charter  granted  to  George  Calvert,  Lord 
Baltimore,  who  had  for  some  years  been  trying  to 
establish  a  colony,  which  he  called  "Avalon,"  much 
farther  north,  and  who  had  grown,  in  the  words  of  a 
letter  of  the  period,  "weary  of  his  intolerable  planta- 
tion at  Newfoundland,  where  he  hath  found  between 
eight  and  nine  months'  winter,  and  upon  the  land 
nothing  but  rocks,  lakes,  or  morasses  like  bogs,  which 
one  might  thrust  a  pike  down  to  the  butt-head." 
But  he  died  before  the  new  charter  was  signed,  and 
was  succeeded  by  his  son  Cecil,  the  second  Lord  Balti- 
more, who  fully  adopted  his  father's  plans  and  am- 
ply defrayed  the  cost  of  the  first  expedition. 

There  exists  a  graphic  account  of  the  voyage  of  the 
first  Maryland  settlers  by  Father  White,  their  chap- 
lain, in  his  report  to  his  religious  superiors  at  Rome. 
He  describes  with  delight  his  first  ascent  of  the  Poto- 
mac River,  of  which  he  says,  "The  Thames  itself  is 
a  mere  rivulet  to  it  ";  and  when  he  reaches  the  St. 
Mary's  River,  where  the  colony  was  founded  (March 
27,  1634),  he  says,  "The  finger  of  God  is  in  this,  and 
He  purposes  some  great  benefit  to  this  nation."  He 
might  well  say  that,  for  the  career  of  the  early  Mary- 

156 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

land  colony  was  peaceful,  tolerant,  and  honorable. 
It  was  the  most  nearly  independent  and  self-govern- 
ing of  the  early  colonies,  the  King  asking  nothing  of 
it  but  two  Indian  arrow-heads  each  year  and  one- 
fifth  of  its  gold  or  silver.  It  was  called  "the  land  of 
the  sanctuary";  all  Christians  were  tolerated  there, 
though  it  did  not,  like  Rhode  Island,  expressly  ex- 
tend, its  toleration  beyond  Christianity.  By  degrees 
it  passed  under  the  control  of  Puritans  from  Virginia, 
who  proved  themselves  less  liberal  to  Roman  Catho- 
lics than  the  latter  had  been  to  them.  But  all  work- 
ing together  laid  the  foundation  of  a  new  community, 
sharing  in  some  respects  the  pursuits  and  destinies 
of  Virginia,  though  more  peaceful,  and  at  times  more 
prosperous. 

The  other  independent  colony  came  from  Sweden — 
the  only  one  ever  planted  in  America  by  that  nation. 
In  the  first  years  of  Virginia  emigration  Lord  Dela- 
ware, who  was  then  governor,  sailed  up  the  river  that 
took  his  name ;  but  he  left  no  settlement  there.  The 
Dutch  afterwards  tried  to  colonize  it,  but  the  Indians 
destroyed  the  colony.  Then  the  great  Protestant 
King  of  Sweden,  Gustavus  Adolphus,  the  "  Lion  of  the 
North,"  resolved,  at  the  suggestion  of  a  Stockholm 
merchant,  William  Usselinx,  to  found  a  colony  which, 
unlike  Virginia,  should  have  no  slaves,  and  which 
should  be  "  the  jewel  of  his  kingdom."  He  died,  and 
his  little  daughter  Christina  succeeded  him;  but  the 
prime -minister,  Oxenstiern,  carried  out  the  original 
plan,  sending  fifty  Swedes  and  Finlanders,  in  1638, 
in  two  vessels  commanded  by  Peter  Minuit,  who  had 
previously  been  Governor  of  New  Nether  land.  In 
spite  of  the  loud  protestations  of  the  Dutch  governor, 
Kieft,  they  established  themselves  on  the  river  Dela- 

i57 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

ware,  and  called  their  fort  Christiana,  in  honor  of 
the  young  queen.  Four  years  after  a  governor  was 
sent  out  to  them  from  Sweden,  a  lieutenant-colonel 
in  the  Swedish  army,  John  Printz,  described  by  one 
writer  as  a  person  "  who  weighed  four  hundred  pounds, 
and  drank  three  drinks  at  every  meal."  He  built 
himself  a  house — let  us  hope  on  firm  foundations — 
upon  what  is  now  called  Province  Island,  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Schuylkill  River.  Meanwhile,  the  Eng- 
lish from  New  Haven  had  settled  within  the  bounds 
of  the  colony,  and  the  Dutch  had  driven  them  away 
and  then  trespassed  themselves.  Nevertheless,  there 
was  a  Swedish  colony  thus  established  in  America, 
rivalling  the  Dutch  of  New  Netherland  in  enterprise 
and  industry,  but  destined  shortly  to  pass  away  and 
leave  hardly  a  trace  behind. 

Such  were  the  beginnings  of  European  colonization 
along  the  Atlantic  coast  of  North  America.  In  the 
middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  (1650)  the  con- 
dition of  that  coast  was  as  follows:  The  New  Eng- 
land colonies  were,  of  course,  English,  and  so  were 
Virginia  and  Maryland ;  but  the  fertile  region  between 
these  northern  and  southern  colonies  was  claimed  and 
occupied,  as  has  been  shown,  by  Holland  and  by 
Sweden.  The  French  claimed  the  unsettled  regions 
now  known  as  the  Carolinas  and  Georgia;  the  Span- 
iards held  all  beyond.  Amid  all  these  conflicting 
nationalities,  what  had  become  of  Ralegh's  dream? 
The  seven  English  colonies,  arranged  in  order  of  time, 
were  as  follows:  Virginia,  founded  in  1607,  and  called 
to  this  day  "the  Old  Dominion";  Plymouth,  founded 
in  1620,  and  still  often  called  "the  Old  Colony"; 
Massachusetts  Bay,  1628;  Connecticut,  1633;  Mary- 
land, 1634 ;  Rhode  Island  and  Providence  plantations, 

158 


"AN    ENGLISH    NATION" 

1636;  New  Haven,  1638.  Four  of  these  —  the  two 
Massachusetts  and  the  two  Connecticut  colonies — 
had  been  leagued  together  since  1643  against  the 
Indians  and  the  Dutch;  the  others  stood  alone,  each 
for  itself.  Among  these  scattered  settlements,  where 
was  Ralegh's  "English  nation"?  It  existed  in  these 
germs. 


VII 

THE    HUNDRED   YEARS'    WAR 

EUROPEAN  history  makes  much  of  the  "Seven 
Years'  War"  and  the  " Thirty  Years'  War"; 
and  when  we  think  of  a  continuous  national  contest 
for  even  the  least  of  those  periods,  there  is  something 
terrible  in  the  picture.  But  the  feeble  English  col- 
onies in  America,  besides  all  the  difficulties  of  pioneer 
life,  had  to  sustain  a  warfare  that  lasted,  with  few 
intermissions,  for  about  a  hundred  years.  It  was, 
moreover,  a  warfare  against  the  most  savage  and 
stealthy  enemies,  gradually  trained  and  reinforced  by 
the  most  formidable  military  skill  of  Europe.  With- 
out counting  the  early  feuds,  such  as  the  Pequot 
War,  there  elapsed  almost  precisely  a  century  from 
the  accession  of  King  Philip,  in  1662,  to  the  Peace  of 
Paris,  which  nominally  ended  the  last  French  and 
Indian  War,  in  1763.  During  this  whole  period,  with 
pacific  intervals  that  sometimes  lasted  for  years,  the 
same  essential  contest  went  on;  the  real  question 
being,  for  the  greater  part  of  the  time,  whether  France 
or  England  should  control  the  continent.  The  de- 
scription of  this  prolonged  war  may,  therefore,  well 
precede  any  general  account  of  the  colonial  or  pro- 
vincial life  in  America. 

The  early  explorers  of  the  Atlantic  coast  usually 
testify  that  they  found  the  Indians  a  gentle,  not  a 

160 


THE    HUNDRED    YEARS'    WAR 

ferocious,  people.  They  were  as  ready  as  could  be 
expected  to  accept  the  friendship  of  the  white  race. 
In  almost  every  case  of  quarrel  the  white  men  were 
the  immediate  aggressors,  and  where  they  were  at- 
tacked without  seeming  cause — as  when  Smith's  Vir- 
ginian colony  was  assailed  by  the  Indians  in  the  first 
fortnight  of  its  existence — there  is  good  reason  to 
think  that  the  act  of  the  Indians  was  in  revenge  for 
wrongs  elsewhere.  One  of  the  first  impulses  of  the 
early  explorers  was  to  kidnap  natives  for  exhibition 
in  Europe,  in  order  to  excite  the  curiosity  of  kings 
or  the  zeal  of  priests;  and  even  where  these  captives 
were  restored  unharmed,  the  distrust  could  not  be 
removed.  Add  to  this  the  acts  of  plunder,  lust,  or 
violence,  and  there  was  plenty  of  provocation  given 
from  the  very  outset. 

The  disposition  to  cheat  and  defraud  the  Indians 
has  been  much  exaggerated,  at  least  as  regards  the 
English  settlers.  The  early  Spanish  invaders  made 
no  pretence  of  buying  one  foot  of  land  from  the  Ind- 
ians, whereas  the  English  often  went  through  the 
form  of  purchase,  and  very  commonly  put  in  prac- 
tice the  reality.  The  Pilgrims,  at  the  very  beginning, 
took  baskets  of  corn  from  an  Indian  grave  to  be  used 
as  seed,  and  paid  for  it  afterwards.  The  year  after 
the  Massachusetts  colony  was  founded  the  court 
decreed:  "It  is  ordered  that  Josias  Plastowe  shall 
(for  stealing  four  baskets  of  corne  from  the  Indians) 
returne  them  eight  baskets  againe,  be  fined  five 
pounds,  and  hereafter  called  by  the  name  of  Josias, 
and  not  Mr.,  as  formerly  he  used  to  be."  As  a  mere 
matter  of  policy,  it  was  the  general  disposition  of  the 
English  settlers  to  obtain  lands  by  honest  purchase; 
indeed,  Governor  Josiah  Winslow,  of  Plymouth,  de- 
ii  161 


I 

HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

clared,  in  reference  to  King  Philip's  War,  that  "be- 
fore these  present  troubles  broke  out  the  English  did 
not  possess  one  foot  of  land  in  this  colony  but  what 
was  fairly  obtained  by  honest  purchase  of  the  Indian 
proprietors."  This  policy  was  quite  general.  Cap- 
tain West,  in  1610,  bought  the  site  of  what  is  now 
Richmond,  Virginia,  for  some  copper.  The  Dutch 
Governor  Minuit  bought  the  island  of  Manhattan,  in 
1626,  for  sixty  gilders.  Lord  Baltimore's  company 
purchased  land  for  cloth,  tools,  and  trinkets;  the 
Swedes  obtained  the  site  of  Christiana  for  a  kettle; 
Roger  Williams  bought  the  island  of  Rhode  Island 
for  forty  fathoms  of  white  beads;  and  New  Haven 
was  sold  to  the  whites,  in  1638,  for  "  twelve  coats  of 
English  cloth,  twelve  alchemy  spoons,  twelve  hoes, 
twelve  hatchets,  twelve  porringers,  twenty  -  four 
knives,  and  twenty-four  cases  of  French  knives  and 
spoons."  Many  other  such  purchases  will  be  found 
recorded  by  Dr.  Ellis.  And  though  the  price  paid 
might  often  seem  ludicrously  small,  yet  we  must 
remember  that  a  knife  or  a  hatchet  was  really  worth 
more  to  an  Indian  than  many  square  miles  of  wild 
land ;  while  even  the  beads  were  a  substitute  for  wam- 
pum, or  wompom,  which  was  their  circulating  me- 
dium in  dealing  with  each  other  and  with  the  whites, 
and  was  worth,  in  1660,  five  shillings  a  fathom. 

So  far  as  the  mere  bargaining  went,  the  Indians 
were  not  individually  the  sufferers  in  the  early  days; 
but  we  must  remember  that  behind  all  these  trans- 
actions there  often  lay  a  theory  which  was  as  merci- 
less as  that  quoted  in  a  previous  paper  from  the 
Spanish  "Requisition,"  and  which  would,  if  logically 
carried  out,  have  made  all  these  bargainings  quite 
superfluous.     Increase  Mather  begins  his  history  of 

162 


THE    HUNDRED    YEARS'    WAR 

King  Philip's  War  with  this  phrase,  "That  the 
Heathen  People  amongst  whom  we  live,  and  whose 
Land  the  Lord  God  of  our  Fathers  hath  given  to  us 
for  a  rightful  Possession";  and  it  was  this  attitude 
of  hostile  superiority  that  gave  the  sting  to  all  the 
relations  of  the  two  races.  If  a  quarrel  rose,  it  was 
apt  to  be  the  white  man's  fault;  and  after  it  had 
arisen,  even  the  humaner  Englishmen  usually  sided 
with  their  race,  as  when  the  peaceful  Plymouth  men 
went  to  war  in  defence  of  the  Weymouth  reprobates. 
This  fact,  and  the  vague  feeling  that  an  irresistible 
pressure  was  displacing  them,  caused  most  of  the 
early  Indian  outbreaks.  And  when  hostilities  had 
once  arisen,  it  was  very  rare  for  a  white  man  of  Eng- 
lish birth  to  be  found  fighting  against  his  own  people, 
although  it  grew  more  and  more  common  to  find  Ind- 
ians on  both  sides. 

As  time  went  on  each  party  learned  from  the  other. 
In  the  early  explorations,  as  of  Champlain  and  Smith, 
we  see  the  Indians  terrified  by  their  first  sight  of 
fire-arms,  but  soon  becoming  skilled  in  the  use  of 
them.  "The  King,  with  fortie  Bowmen  to  guard 
me,"  says  Captain  John  Smith,  in  1608,  "entreated 
me  to  discharge  my  Pistoll,  which  they  there  pre- 
sented to  me,  with  a  mark  at  sixscore  to  strike  there- 
with; but  to  spoil  the  practise  I  broke  the  cocke, 
whereat  they  were  much  discontented."  But  writ- 
ing more  than  twenty  years  later,  in  163 1,  he  says  of 
the  Virginia  settlers,  "The  loving  Salvages  their 
kinde  friends  they  trained  up  so  well  to  shoot  in  a 
Peace  [fowling-piece]  to  hunt  and  kill  them  fowle, 
they  became  more  expert  than  our  own  countrymen." 
La  Hontan,  writing  in  1703,  says  of  the  successors  of 
those  against  whom  Champlain  had  first  used  fire- 

163 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

arms,  "The  Strength  of  the  Iroquese  lies  in  engag- 
ing with  Fire  Arms  in  a  Forrest,  for  they  shoot  very 
dexterously."  They  learned  also  to  make  more  skil- 
ful fortifications,  and  to  keep  a  regular  watch  at  night, 
which  in  the  time  of  the  early  explorers  they  had 
omitted.  The  same  La  Hontan  says  of  the  Iroquois, 
"They  are  as  negligent  in  the  night-time  as  they  are 
vigilant  in  the  day." 

But  it  is  equally  true  that  the  English  colonists 
learned  much  in  the  way  of  forest  warfare  from  the 
Indians.  The  French  carried  their  imitation  so  far 
that  they  often  disguised  themselves  to  resemble 
their  allies,  with  paint,  feathers,  and  all;  it  was  some- 
times impossible  to  tell  in  an  attacking  party  which 
warriors  were  French  and  which  were  Indians.  With- 
out often  going  so  far  as  this,  the  English  colonists 
still  modified  their  tactics.  At  first  they  seemed  al- 
most irresistible  because  of  their  armor  and  weapons. 
In  the  very  first  year  of  the  Plymouth  settlement, 
when  report  was  brought  that  their  friend  Massasoit 
had  been  attacked  by  the  Narragansets,  and  a  friend- 
ly Indian  had  been  killed,  the  colony  sent  ten  armed 
men,  including  Miles  Standish,  to  the  Indian  town 
of  Namasket  (now  Middleborough)  to  rescue  or  re- 
venge their  friend ;  and  they  succeeded  in  their  enter- 
prise, surrounding  the  chief's  house  and  frightening 
every  one  in  a  large  Indian  village  by  two  discharges 
of  their  muskets. 

But  the  heavy  armor  gradually  proved  a  doubtful 
advantage  against  a  stealthy  and  light-footed  foe. 
In  spite  of  the  superior  physical  strength  of  the  Eng- 
lishman, he  could  not  travel  long  distances  through 
the  woods  or  along  the  sands  without  lightening  his 
weight.     He  learned  also  to  fight  from  behind  a  tree, 

164 


THE    HUNDRED    YEARS'    WAR 

to  follow  a  trail,  to  cover  his  body  with  hemlock 
boughs  for  disguise  when  scouting.  Captain  Church 
states  in  his  own  narrative  that  he  learned  from  his 
Indian  soldiers  to  march  his  men  "thin  and  scatter- 
ing" through  the  woods;  that  the  English  had  pre- 
viously, according  to  the  Indians,  "kept  in  a  heap  to- 
gether, so  that  it  was  as  easy  to  hit  them  as  to  hit 
a  house."  Even  the  advantage  of  fire-arms  involved 
the  risk  of  being  without  ammunition,  so  that  the 
Rhode  Island  colony,  by  the  code  of  laws  adopted 
in  1647,  required  that  every  man  between  seventeen 
and  seventy  should  have  a  bow  with  four  arrows, 
and  exercise  with  them ;  and  that  each  father  should 
furnish  every  son  from  seven  to  seventeen  years  old 
with  a  bow,  two  arrows,  and  shafts,  and  should  bring 
them  up  to  shooting.  If  this  statute  was  violated  a 
fine  was  imposed,  which  the  father  must  pay  for  the 
son,  the  master  for  the  servant,  deducting  jt  in  the 
latter  case  from  his  wages. 

Less  satisfactory  was  the  change  by  which  the 
taking  of  scalps  came  to  be  a  recognized  part  of 
colonial  warfare.  Hannah  Dustin,  who  escaped  from 
Indian  captivity  in  1698,  took  ten  scalps  with  her  own 
hand,  and  was  paid  for  them.  Captain  Church,  un- 
dertaking his  expedition  against  the  eastern  Indians, 
in  1705,  after  the  Deerfield  massacre,  announced  that 
he  had  not  hitherto  permitted  the  scalping  of  "  Canada 
men,'"  but  should  thenceforth  allow  it.  In  1722, 
when  the  Massachusetts  colony  sent  an  expedition 
against  the  village  of  "praying  Indians,"  founded  by 
Father  Rasle,  they  offered  for  each  scalp  a  bounty 
of  £15,  afterwards  increased  to  £100;  and  this  in- 
humanity was  so  far  carried  out  that  the  French 
priest    himself   was   one   of   the   victims.     Jeremiah 

165 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Bumstead,  of  Boston,  made  this  entry  in  his  almanac 
in  the  same  year:  "Aug.  22,  28  Indian  scalps  brought 
to  Boston,  one  of  which  was  Bombazen's  [an  Indian 
chief]  and  one  fryer  Raile's."  Two  years  after,  the 
celebrated  but  inappropriately  named  Captain  Love- 
well,  the  foremost  Indian  fighter  of  his  region,  came 
upon  ten  Indians  asleep  round  a  pond.  He  and  his 
men  killed  and  scalped  them  all,  and  entered  Dover, 
New  Hampshire,  bearing  the  ten  scalps  stretched  on 
hoops  and  elevated  on  poles.  After  receiving  an 
ovation  in  Dover  they  went  by  water  to  Boston,  and 
were  paid  a  thousand  pounds  for  their  scalps.  Yet 
Lovewell's  party  was  always  accompanied  by  a  chap- 
lain, and  had  prayers  every  morning  and  evening. 

The  most  painful  aspect  of  the  whole  practice  lies 
in  the  fact  that  it  was  not  confined  to  those  actually 
engaged  in  fighting,  but  that  the  colonial  authorities 
actually,  established  a  tariff  of  prices  for  scalps,  in- 
cluding even  non-combatants — so  much  for  a  man's, 
so  much  for  a  woman's,  so  much  for  a  child's.  Dr. 
Ellis  has  lately  pointed  out  the  striking  circumstance 
that  whereas  William  Penn  had  declared  the  person 
of  an  Indian  to  be  "sacred,"  his  grandson,  in  1764, 
offered  $134  for  the  scalp  of  an  Indian  man,  $130  for 
that  of  a  boy  under  ten,  and  $50  for  that  of  a  woman 
or  girl.  The  habit  doubtless  began  in  the  fury  of 
retaliation,  and  was  continued  in  order  to  conciliate 
Indian  allies ;  and  when  bounties  were  offered  to  them, 
the  white  volunteers  naturally  claimed  a  share.  But 
there  is  no  doubt  that  Puritan  theology  helped  the 
adoption  of  the  practice.  It  was  partly  because  the 
Indian  was  held  to  be  something  worse  than  a  beast 
that  he  was  treated  with  very  little  mercy.  The 
truth  is  that  he  was  viewed  as  a  fiend,  and  there  could 

166 


THE    HUNDRED    YEARS'    WAR 

not  be  much  scruple  about  using  inhumanities  against 
a  demon.  Cotton  Mather  calls  Satan  "the  old  land- 
lord" of  the  American  wilderness,  and  says  in  his 
Magnolia:  "These  Parts  were  then  covered  with 
Nations  of  Barbarous  Indians  and  Infidels,  in  whom 
the  Prince  of  the  Power  of  the  Air  did  work  as  a 
Spirit;  nor  could  it  be  expected  that  Nations  of 
Wretches  whose  whole  religion  was  the  most  Explicit 
sort  of  Devil- Worship  should  not  be  acted  by  the 
devil  to  engage  in  some  early  and  bloody  Action  for 
the  Extinction  of  a  Plantation  so  contrary  to  his  In- 
terests as  that  of  New  England  was." 

Before  the  French  influence  began  to  be  felt  there 
was  very  little  union  on  the  part  of  the  Indians,  and 
each  colony  adjusted  its  own  relations  with  them. 
At  the  time  of  the  frightful  Indian  massacre  in  the 
Virginia  colony  (March  22,  1622),  when  three  hun- 
dred and  forty-seven  men,  women,  and  children  were 
murdered,  the  Plymouth  colony  was  living  in  entire 
peace  with  its  savage  neighbors.  "  We  have  found  the 
Indians,"  wrote  Governor  Winslow,  "very  faithful 
to  their  covenants  of  peace  with  us,  very  loving  and 
willing  to  pleasure  us.  We  go  with  them  in  some 
cases  fifty  miles  into  the  country,  and  walk  as  safely 
and  peacefully  in  the  woods  as  in  the  highways  of 
England."  The  treaty  with  Massasoit  lasted  for 
more  than  fifty  years,  and  the  first  bloodshed  between 
the  Plymouth  men  and  the  Indians  was  incurred  in 
the  protection  of  the  colony  of  Weymouth,  which 
had  brought  trouble  on  itself  in  1623.  The  Connecti- 
cut settlements  had  far  more  difficulty  with  the  Ind- 
ians than  those  in  Massachusetts,  but  the  severe 
punishment  inflicted  on  the  Pequots  in  1637  quieted 
the  savages  for  a  long  time.     In  that  fight  a  village 

167 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

of  seventy  wigwams  was  destroyed  by  a  force  of 
ninety  white  men  and  several  hundred  friendly  Ind- 
ians ;  and  Captain  Underhill,  the  second  in  command, 
has  left  a  quaint  delineation  of  the  attack. 

There  was  a  period  resembling  peace  in  the  east- 
ern colonies  for  nearly  forty  years  after  the  Pequot 
War,  while  in  Virginia  there  were  renewed  massacres 
in  1644  and  1656.  But  the  first  organized  Indian 
outbreak  began  with  the  conspiracy  of  King  Philip 
in  1675,  although  the  seeds  had  been  sown  before 
that  chief  succeeded  to  power  in  1662.  In  that  year 
Wamsutta,  or  Alexander,  Philip's  brother — both 
being  sons  of  Massasoit — having  fallen  under  some 
suspicion,  was  either  compelled  or  persuaded  by 
Major  Josiah  Winslow,  afterwards  the  first  native- 
born  Governor  of  Plymouth,  to  visit  that  settlement. 
The  Indian  came  with  his  whole  train  of  warriors  and 
women,  including  his  queen,  the  celebrated  "squaw 
sachem"  Weetamo,  and  they  stayed  at  Winslow's 
house.  Here  the  chief  fell  ill.  The  day  was  very 
hot,  and  though  Winslow  offered  his  horse  to  the 
chief,  it  was  refused,  because  there  was  none  for  his 
squaw  or  the  other  women.  He  was  sent  home  be- 
cause of  illness,  and  died  before  he  got  half-way 
home.  This  is  the  story  as  told  by  Hubbard,  but 
not  altogether  confirmed  by  other  authorities.  If 
true,  it  is  interesting  as  confirming  the  theory  of 
that  careful  student,  Lucien  Carr,  that  the  early 
position  of  women  among  the  Indians  was  higher  than 
has  been  generally  believed.  It  is  pretty  certain,  at 
any  rate,  that  Alexander's  widow,  Weetamo,  believed 
her  husband  to  have  been  poisoned  by  the  English, 
and  she  ultimately  sided  with  Philip  when  the  war 
broke  out,  and  apparently  led  him  and  other  Indians 

168 


THE    HUNDRED    YEARS'    WAR 

to  the  same  view  as  to  the  poisoning.  It  is  evident 
that  from  the  time  of  Philip's  accession  to  authority, 
whatever  he  may  have  claimed,  his  mind  was  turned 
more  and  more  against  the  English. 

It  is  now  doubted  whether  the  war  known  as  King 
Philip's  War  was  the  result  of  such  deliberate  and 
organized  action  as  was  formerly  supposed,  but  about 
the  formidable  strength  of  the  outbreak  there  can  be 
no  question.  It  began  in  June,  1675;  Philip  was 
killed  August  12,  1676,  and  the  war  was  prolonged 
at  the  eastward  for  nearly  two  years  after  his  death. 
Ten  or  twelve  Puritan  towns  were  utterly  destroyed, 
many  more  damaged,  and  five  or  six  hundred  men 
were  killed  or  missing.  The  war  cost  the  colonists 
£100,000,  and  the  Plymouth  colony  was  left  under  a 
debt  exceeding  the  whole  valuation  of  its  property — 
a  debt  ultimately  paid,  both  principal  and  interest. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  war  tested  and  cemented  the 
league  founded  in  1643  between  four  colonies — 
Massachusetts,  Plymouth,  New  Haven,  and  Connect- 
icut— against  the  Indians  and  Dutch,  while  this  pre- 
pared the  way  more  and  more  for  the  extensive  com- 
binations that  came  after.  In  this  early  war,  as  the 
Indians  had  no  French  allies,  so  the  English  had  few 
Indian  allies,  and  it  was  less  complex  than  the  later 
contests,  and  so  far  less  formidable.  But  it  was  the 
first  real  experience  on  the  part  of  the  eastern  col- 
onists of  all  the  peculiar  horrors  of  Indian  warfare — 
the  stealthy  approach,  the  abused  hospitality,  the 
early  morning  assault,  the  maimed  cattle,  tortured 
prisoners,  slain  infants.  All  the  terrors  that  lately  at- 
tached to  a  frontier  attack  of  Apaches  or  Comanches 
belonged  to  the  daily  life  of  settlers  in  New  England 
and  Virginia  for  many  years,  with  one  vast  difference, 

169 


HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

arising  from  the  total  absence  in  those  early  days  of 
any  personal  violence  or  insult  to  women.  By  the 
general  agreement  of  witnesses  from  all  nations,  in- 
cluding the  women  captives  themselves,  this  crown- 
ing crime  was  then  wholly  absent.  The  once  famous 
"white  woman,"  Mary  Jemison,  who  was  taken  pris- 
oner by  the  Senecas  at  ten  years  old,  in  1743 — who 
lived  in  that  tribe  all  her  life,  survived  two  Indian 
husbands,  and  at  last  died  at  ninety — always  testified 
that  she  had  never  received  an  insult  from  an  Indian, 
and  had  never  known  of  a  captive's  receiving  any. 
She  added  that  she  had  known  few  instances  in  the 
tribe  of  conjugal  immorality,  although  she  lived  to 
see  it  demoralized  and  ruined  by  strong  drink. 

The  English  colonists  seem  never  to  have  inflicted 
on  the  Indians  any  cruelty  resulting  from  sensual 
vices,  but  of  barbarity  of  another  kind  there  was 
plenty,  for  it  was  a  cruel  age.  When  the  Narragan- 
set  fort  was  taken  by  the  English,  December  19,  1675, 
the  wigwams  within  the  fort  were  all  set  on  fire, 
against  the  earnest  entreaty  of  Captain  Church ;  and 
it  was  thought  that  more  than  one-half  the  English 
loss — which  amounted  to  several  hundred — might 
have  been  saved  had  there  been  any  shelter  for  their 
own  wounded  on  that  cold  night.  This,  however, 
was  a  question  of  military  necessity;  but  the  true 
spirit  of  the  age  was  seen  in  the  punishments  inflicted 
after  the  war  was  over.  The  heads  of  Philip's  chief 
followers  were  cut  off,  though  Captain  Church,  their 
captor,  had  promised  to  spare  their  lives ;  and  Philip 
himself  was  beheaded  and  quartered  by  Church's  or- 
der, since  he  was  regarded,  curiously  enough,  as  a 
rebel  against  Charles  the  Second,  and  this  was  the 
state  punishment  for  treason.     Another  avowed  rea- 

170 


THE    HUNDRED    YEARS'    WAR 

son  was,  that  "as  he  had  caused  many  an  English- 
man's body  to  lye  unburied,"  not  one  of  his  bones 
should  be  placed  under  ground.  The  head  was  set 
upon  a  pole  in  Plymouth,  where  it  remained  for  more 
than  twenty  -  four  years.  Yet  when  we  remember 
that  the  heads  of  alleged  traitors  were  exposed  in 
London  at  Temple  Bar  for  nearly  a  century  longer — 
till  1772  at  least— it  is  unjust  to  infer  from  this  course 
any  such  fiendish  cruelty  as  it  would  now  imply.  It 
is  necessary  to  extend  the  same  charity,  however 
hard  it  may  be,  to  the  selling  of  Philip's  wife  and  lit- 
tle son  into  slavery  at  the  Bermudas;  and  here,  as 
has  been  seen,  the  clergy  were  consulted  and  the 
Old  Testament  called  into  requisition. 

While  these  events  were  passing  in  the  eastern 
settlements  there  were  Indian  outbreaks  in  Virginia, 
resulting  in  war  among  the  white  settlers  themselves. 
The  colony  was,  for  various  reasons,  discontented;  it 
was  greatly  oppressed,  and  a  series  of  Indian  mur- 
ders brought  the  troubles  to  a  climax.  The  policy 
pursued  against  the  Indians  was  severe,  and  yet  there 
was  no  proper  protection  afforded  by  the  government ; 
war  was  declared  against  them  in  1676,  and  then  the 
forces  sent  out  were  suddenly  disbanded  by  the  gov- 
ernor, Berkeley.  At  last  there  was  a  popular  re- 
bellion, which  included  almost  all  the  civil  and  mili- 
tary officers  of  the  colony,  and  the  rebellious  party 
put  Nathaniel  Bacon,  Jr.,  a  recently  arrived  but  very 
popular  planter,  at  their  head.  He  marched  with  five 
hundred  men  against  the  Indians,  but  was  proclaimed 
a  traitor  by  the  governor,  whom  Bacon  proclaimed  a 
traitor  in  return.  The  war  with  the  savages  became 
by  degrees  quite  secondary  to  the  internal  contests 
among  the  English,  in  the  course  of  which  Bacon  took 

171 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

and  burned  Jamestown,  beginning,  it  is  said,  with  his 
own  house ;  but  he  died  soon  after.  The  insurrection 
was  suppressed,  and  the  Indians  were  finally  quieted 
by  a  treaty. 

Into  all  the  Indian  wars  after  King  Philip's  death 
two  nationalities  besides  the  Indian  and  English  en- 
tered in  an  important  way.  These  were  the  Dutch 
and  the  French.  It  was  the  Dutch  who,  soon  after 
1614,  first  sold  fire-arms  to  the  Indians  in  defiance  of 
their  own  laws,  and  by  this  means  greatly  increased 
the  horrors  of  the  Indian  warfare.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  Dutch,  because  of  the  close  friendship  they 
established  with  the  Five  Nations,  commonly  called 
the  Iroquois,  did  to  the  English  colonists,  though 
unintentionally,  a  service  so  great  that  the  whole 
issue  of  the  prolonged  war  may  have  turned  upon  it. 
These  tribes,  the  Cayugas,  Mohawks,  Oneidas,  Onon- 
dagas,  and  Senecas — afterwards  joined  by  the  Tus- 
caroras — held  the  key  to  the  continent.  Occupying 
the  greater  part  of  what  is  now  the  State  of  New  York, 
they  virtually  ruled  the  country  from  the  Atlantic  to 
the  Mississippi  and  from  the  Great  Lakes  to  the 
Savannah  River.  They  were  from  the  first  treated 
with  great  consideration  by  the  Dutch,  and  they  re- 
mained, with  brief  intervals  of  war,  their  firm  friends. 
One  war,  indeed,  there  was  under  the  injudicious 
management  of  Governor  Kieft,  lasting  from  1640  to 
1643;  and  this  came  near  involving  the  English  col- 
onies, while  it  caused  the  death  of  sixteen  hundred 
Indians,  first  or  last,  seven  hundred  of  these  being 
massacred  under  the  borrowed  Puritan  leader  Captain 
Underhill.  But  this  made  no  permanent  interrup- 
tion to  the  alliance  between  the  Iroquois  and  the 
Dutch. 

172 


THE    HUNDRED    YEARS'    WAR 

When  New  Netherland  yielded  to  the  English, 
the  same  alliance  was  retained,  and  to  this  we.  prob- 
ably owe  the  preservation  of  the  colonies,  their  union 
against  England,  and  the  very  existence  of  the  pres- 
ent American  nation.  Yet  the  first  English  governor, 
Colden,  has  left  on  record  the  complaint  of  an  Indian 
chief,  who  said  that  they  very  soon  felt  the  difference 
between  the  two  alliances.  "When  the  Dutch  held 
this  country,"  he  said,  "we  lay  in  our  houses,  but  the 
English  have  always  made  us  lie  out-of-doors." 

But  if  the  Dutch  were  thus  an  important  factor  in 
the  Indian  wars,  the  French  became  almost  the  con- 
trolling influence  on  the  other  side.     Except  for  the 
strip   of   English  colonies   along  the   sea-shore,   the 
North    American    continent    north    of    Mexico    was 
French.     This  was  not  the  result  of  accident  or  of 
the  greater  energy  of  that  nation,  but  of  a  systematic 
policy,  beginning  with  Champlain  and  never   aban- 
doned by  his  successors.     This  plan  was,  as  admi- 
rably stated  by  Parkman,  "to  influence  Indian  coun- 
sels/ to  hold  the  balance  of  power  between  adverse 
tribes,  to  envelop  in  the  net-work  of  French  power 
and  diplomacy  the  remotest  hordes  of  the  wilderness." 
With  this  was    combined  a  love  of    exploration  so 
great  that  it  was  hard  to  say  which  assisted  the  most 
in  spreading  their  dominion— religion,  the  love  of  ad- 
venture, diplomatic  skill,  or  military  talent.     These 
between  them  gave  the  interior  of  the  continent  to  the 
French.     One    of    the    New   York    governors   wrote 
home  that  if  the  French  were  to  hold  all  that  they 
had  discovered,  England  would  not  have  a  hundred 
miles  from  the  sea  anywhere. 

France  had  early  occupied  Acadia,   Canada,   and 
the  St.  Lawrence  on  the  north.     Marquette  rediscov- 

i73 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

ered  the  Mississippi  and  La  Salle  traced  it,  though 
Alvar  Nunez  had  crossed  it  and  De  Soto  had  been 
buried  beneath  it.  A  Frenchman  first  crossed  the 
Rocky  Mountains ;  the  French  settled  the  Mississippi 
Valley  in  1699  and  Mobile  in  1702.  The  great  west- 
ern valleys  are  still  full  of  French  names,  and  for 
every  one  left  two  or  three  have  been  blotted  out. 
The  English  maps,  down  to  the  year  1763,  give  the 
name  "  New  France"  not  to  Canada  only,  but  to  the 
Ohio  and  Mississippi  valleys.  New  France  was  vast ; 
New  England  was  a  narrow  strip  along  the  shore. 
But  there  was  a  yet  greater  difference  in  the  tenure 
by  which  the  two  nations  held  their  nominal  settle- 
ments. The  French  held  theirs  with  the  aid  of  a 
vast  system  of  paid  officials,  priests,  generals,  and 
governors ;  the  English  colonists  kept  theirs  for  them- 
selves, aided  by  a  little  chartered  authority  or  de- 
puted power.  Moreover,  the  French  retained  theirs 
by  a  chain  of  forts  and  a  net-work  of  trading  posts; 
the  English  held  theirs  by  sober  agriculture.  In  the 
end  the  spade  and  axe  proved  mightier  than  the 
sword.  What  postponed  the  triumph  was  that  the 
French,  not  the  English,  had  won  the  hearts  of  -the 
Indians. 

This  subject  has  been  considered  in  a  previous 
chapter,  and  need  be  only  briefly  mentioned  here; 
but  it  should  not  be  wholly  passed  by.  To  the  Ind- 
ian, the  Frenchman  was  a  daring  swordsman,  a  gay 
cavalier,  a  dashing  leader,  and  the  most  charming  of 
companions ;  the  Englishman  was  a  plodding  and  sor- 
did agriculturist.  "The  stoic  of  the  woods"  saw 
men  infinitely  his  superiors  in  all  knowledge  and  in 
the  refinements  of  life,  who  yet  cheerfully  accepted 
his  way  of  living,  and  took  with  apparent  relish  to 

i74 


LA    SALLE    CHRISTENING    THE    COUNTRY     '    LOUISIANA 


THE    HUNDRED    YEARS'    WAR 

his  whole  way  of  existence.  Charlevoix  sums  it  all 
up  admirably:  "The  savages  did  not  become  French: 
the  Frenchmen  became  savages."  To  the  savage,  at 
least,  the  alliance  was  inestimable.  What  saved  the 
English  colonies  was  the  fact  that  it  was  not  quite 
universal.  It  failed  to  reach  the  most  advanced,  the 
most  powerful,  and  the  most  central  race  of  savages 
— the  tribes  called  Iroquois.  It  took  the  French  a 
great  many  years  to  outgrow  the  attitude  of  hostility 
to  these  tribes  which  began  with  the  attack  of  Cham- 
plain  and  a  few  Frenchmen  on  an  Iroquois  fort.  Baron 
La  Hon  tan,  one  of  the  few  Frenchmen  who  were  not 
also  good  Catholics,  attributes  this  mainly  to  the  in- 
fluence of  the  priests.  He  says,  in  the  preface  to  the 
English  translation  of  his  letters  (1703):  "Notwith- 
standing the  veneration  I  have  for  the  clergy,  I  im- 
pute to  them  all  the  mischief  the  Iroquese  have  done 
to  the  French  colonies  in  the  course  of  a  war  that 
would  never  have  been  undertaken  if  it  had  not  been 
for  the  counsels  of  those  pious  churchmen."  But 
whatever  the  cause,  the  fact  was  of  vital  importance, 
and  proved  to  be,  as  has  been  already  said,  the  turn- 
ing-point of  the  whole  controversy. 

These  being  the  general  features  of  the  French  and 
Indian  warfare,  it  remains  only  to  consider  briefly 
its  successive  stages.  It  took  the  form  of  a  series  of 
outbreaks,  most  of  which  were  so  far  connected  with 
public  affairs  in  Europe  that  their  very  names  often 
record  the  successive  rulers  under  whose  nominal 
authority  they  were  waged.  The  first,  known  as 
"King  William's  War,"  and  sometimes  as  "St.  Cas- 
tin's  War,"  began  in  1688,  ten  years  after  the  close 
of  King  Philip's  War,  while  France  and  England  were 
still  at  peace.     In  April  of  the  next  year  came  the 

i75 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

news  that  William  of  Orange  had  landed  in  England, 
and  this  change  in  the  English  dynasty  was  an  im- 
portant argument  in  the  hands  of  the  French,  who 
insisted  on  regarding  the  colonists  not  as  loyal  English- 
men, but  as  rebels  against  their  lawful  king,  James 
the  Second.  In  reality  the  American  collision  had 
been  in  preparation  for  years.  "About  the  year 
1685,"  wrote  the  English  official,  Edward  Randolph, 
"the  French  of  Canada  encroached  upon  the  lands  of 
the  subjects  of  the  crown  of  England,  building  forts 
upon  the  heads  of  their  great  rivers,  and,  extending 
their  bounds,  disturbed  the  inhabitants."  On  the 
other  hand,  it  must  be  remembered  that  England 
claimed  the  present  territory  of  New  Brunswick  and 
Nova  Scotia,  and  the  provincial  charter  of  Massa- 
chusetts covered  those  regions.  Thus  each  nation- 
ality seemed  to  the  other  to  be  trying  to  encroach, 
and  each  professed  to  be  acting  on  the  defensive. 
With  this  purpose  the  French  directly  encouraged 
Indian  outbreaks.  We  now  know,  from  the  de- 
spatches of  Denonville,  the  French  Governor  of 
Canada,  that  he  claimed  as  his  own  merit  the  suc- 
cesses of  the  Indians;  and  Champigny  wrote  that  he 
himself  had  supplied  them  with  gunpowder,  and  that 
the  Indians  of  the  Christian  villages  near  Quebec 
had  taken  the  leading  part. 

Unluckily  several  of  the  provinces  had  just  been 
brought  together  under  the  governorship  of  a  man 
greatly  disliked  and  distrusted,  Sir  Edmund  Andros. 
In  August  this  official,  then  newly  placed  in  power, 
visited  the  Five  Nations  at  Albany  to  secure  their 
friendliness.  During  his  absence  there  were  rumors 
of  Indian  outbreaks  at  the  East,  and  though  he  took 
Steps  to  suppress  them,  yet  nobody  trusted  him,     The 

I7<5 


THE    HUNDRED    YEARS'    WAR 

friendly  Indians  declared  that  ''the  Governor  was  a 
rogue,  and  had  hired  the  Indians  to  kill  the  English," 
and  that  the  Mohawks  were  to  seize  Boston  in  the 
spring.  This  rumor  helped  the  revolt  of  the  people 
against  Andros;  and  after  his  overthrow  the  garrisons 
at  the  eastward,  were  broken  up  and  the  savage 
assaults  recommenced.  Cocheco,  now  Dover,  New 
Hampshire,  was  destroyed;  Pemaquid,  a  fort  with 
seven  or  eight  cannon,  was  regularly  besieged  by  a 
hundred  Christian  Indians  under  their  priest,  Pere 
Thury,  who  urged  on  the  attack,  but  would  not  let 
the  English  be  scalped  or  tortured.  From  the  begin- 
ning the  movements  of  the  French  and  Indians  were 
not  impulsive  outbreaks,  as  heretofore,  but  were  di- 
rected by  a  trained  soldier  of  fifty  years'  experience, 
the  Count  de  Frontenac.  There  were  no  soldiers  of 
experience  among  the  colonists,  and  they  fought  like 
peasants  against  a  regular  army.  Yet  when,  after 
a  terrible  Indian  massacre  at  Schenectady,  a  congress 
of  delegates  was  held  at  New  York,  in  May,  1690, 
they  daringly  planned  an  attack  on  the  two  strong- 
holds, Quebec  and  Montreal.  Winthrop,  of  Connect- 
icut, was  to  take  Montreal  by  a  land  expedition,  and 
Sir  William  Phips,  of  Massachusetts — a  rough  sailor 
who  had  captured  Port  Royal — was  sent  by  water 
with  more  than  two  thousand  men  against  Quebec, 
an  almost  impregnable  fortress  manned  by  nearly 
three  thousand.  Both  enterprises  failed,  and  the 
Baron  La  Hontan  wrote  of  Phips — in  the  English 
edition  of  his  letters — that  he  could  not  have  served 
the  French  better  had  he  stood  still  with  his  hands  in 
his  pockets.  The  colonies  were  impoverished  by 
these  hopeless  efforts,  and  the  Puritans  attributed 
their  failure  to  "the  frown  of  God,"  The  Indians 
u  177 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

made  fresh  attacks  at  Pentucket  (Haverhill)  and  else- 
where; but  the  Peace  of  Ryswick  (September  20, 
1697)  stopped  the  war  for  a  time  and  provided  that 
the  American  boundaries  of  France  and  England 
should  remain  the  same. 

A  few  more  years  brought  new  hostilities  (May  4, 
1702),  when  England  declared  war  against  France 
and  Spain.  This  was  called  in  Europe  "The  War  of 
the  Spanish  Succession,"  but  in  America  simply 
"Queen  Anne's  War."  The  Five  Nations  were  now 
strictly  neutral,  so  that  New  York  was  spared,  and 
the  force  of  the  war  fell  on  the  New  England  settle- 
ments. The  eastern  Indians  promised  equal  neu- 
trality, and  one  of  their  chiefs  said,  "The  sun  is  not 
more  distant  from  the  earth  than  our  thoughts  from 
war."  But  they  joined  in  the  war  just  the  same, 
and  the  Deerfield  (Massachusetts)  massacre,  with  the 
captivity  of  Rev.  John  Williams,  roused  the  terror  of 
all  the  colonists.  Traces  of  that  attack,  in  the  form 
of  tomahawk  strokes  upon  doors,  are  still  to  be  seen 
in  Deerfield.  The  Governor  of  Massachusetts  was 
distrusted;  he  tried  in  vain  to  take  the  small  fort  of 
Port  Royal  in  Nova  Scotia — "the  hornets'  nest,"  as 
it  was  called ;  but  it  was  finally  taken  in  17 10,  and  its 
name  was  changed  to  Annapolis  Royal,  afterwards 
Annapolis,  in  honor  of  the  Queen. 

The  year  after  a  great  expedition  was  sent  from 
England  by  St.  John,  afterwards  Lord  Bolingbroke, 
to  effect  the  conquest  of  Canada.-  Fifteen  ships  of 
war,  with  five  regiments  of  Marlborough's  veterans, 
reached  Boston  in  June,  171 1.  Provincial  troops 
went  from  New  York  and  New  Jersey,  as  well  as 
New  England,  and  there  were  eight  hundred  Iroquois 
warriors.    St.  John  wrote,  "  I  believe  you  may  depend 

178 


THE    HUNDRED    YEARS'    WAR 

upon  our  being,  at  this  time,  the  masters  of  all  North 
America."  On  the  contrary,  they  did  not  become 
masters  of  an  inch  of  ground;  the  expedition  utterly 
failed,  mainly  through  the  incompetency  of  the  com- 
mander, Admiral  Sir  Hovenden  Walker;  eight  ships 
were  wrecked,  eight  hundred  and  eighty-four  men 
were  drowned,  and  fleet  and  land  forces  retreated. 
In  April,  17 13,  the  war  nominally  closed  with  the 
Peace  of  Utrecht,  which  gave  to  England  Hudson 
Bay,  Newfoundland,  and  Acadia — the  last  so  poorly 
defined  as  to  lead  to  much  trouble  at  a  later  day. 

But  in  Maine  the  Indian  disturbances  still  went  on. 
New  forts  were  built  by  the  colonists,  and  there  were 
new  attacks  by  the  Abenaki  tribe.  Among  these  the 
most  conspicuous  figure  was  for  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury the  Jesuit  priest  Pere  Rasle,  who  had  collected 
a  village  of  "praying  Indians"  at  Norridgewock,  and 
had  trained  a  band  of  forty  young  men  to  assist, 
wearing  cassock  and  surplice,  in  the  services  of  the 
Church.  There  is  in  the  Harvard  College  Library  a 
MS.  glossary  of  the  Abenaki  language  in  his  hand- 
writing. His  whole  career  was  one  of  picturesque 
self-devotion;  but  he  belonged  emphatically  to  the 
Church  militant,  and  was  in  constant  communication 
with  the  French  Governor  of  Canada.  His  settle- 
ment was  the  headquarters  for  all  attacks  upon  the 
English  colonists,  and  was  finally  broken  up  and  an- 
nihilated by  them  on  August  23,  1724.  With  him 
disappeared  the  Jesuit  missions  in  New  England, 
though  there  were  scattering  hostilities  some  time 
longer.  On  December  15,  1725,  the  Abenaki  chiefs 
signed  at  Boston  a  treaty  of  peace,  which  is  still  pre- 
served in  the  Massachusetts  archives,  and  this  com- 
pact was  long  maintained. 

179 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Nineteen  years  of  comparative  peace  now  followed 
— by  far  the  longest  interval  during  the  contest  of  a 
century.  In  1744  came  another  war  between  Eng- 
land and  France,  known  in  Europe  as  "The  War  of 
the  Austrian  Succession,"  but  in  America  as  "King 
George's  War,"  or  as  "  Governor  Shirley's  War."  Its 
chief  event  was  one  which  was  the  great  military  sur- 
prise of  that' period,  both  at  home  and  abroad — 
the  capture  of  Louisburg  in  1745.  Hawthorne,  in 
one  of  his  early  papers,  has  given  a  most  graphic 
picture  of  the  whole  occurrence.  A  fleet  sailed  from 
Boston  under  Sir  William  Pepperrell,  who  led  three 
thousand  men  to  attack  a  stronghold  which  had  been 
called  the  Gibraltar  of  America,  and  whose  fortifica- 
tions had  cost  five  million  dollars.  The  walls  were 
twenty  or  thirty  feet  high  and  forty  feet  thick ;  they 
were  surrounded  by  a  ditch  eighty  feet  wide  and  de- 
fended by  two  hundred  and  forty-three  pieces  of 
artillery,  against  which  the  assailants  had  eighteen 
cannon  and  three  mortars.  It  seemed  an  enterprise 
as  hopeless  as  that  of  Sir  William  Phips  against  Que- 
bec, and  yet  it  succeeded.  To  the  amazement  of  all, 
the  fortress  surrendered  after  a  siege  of  six  weeks. 
The  pious  Puritans  believed  it  a  judgment  of  God 
upon  the  Roman  Catholics,  and  held  with  delight  a 
Protestant  service  in  the  chapel  of  the  fort.  But 
three  years  after  (1748)  the  Peace  of  Aix-la-Chapelle 
provided  for  the  mutual  restoration  of  all  conquests, 
and  Louisburg  was  given  back  to  the  French. 

Every  step  in  this  prolonged  war  taught  the  col- 
onists the  need  of  uniting.  All  the  New  England 
colonies  had  been  represented  at  Louisburg  by  men, 
and  New  York,  New  Jersey,  and  Pennsylvania  by 
money,     New  hostilities  taking  place  in  Nova  Scotia 

180 


100'  Longitude     West       90'      from     fireepwich 


NORTH    AMERICA,    1750 
Showing   Claims   Arising   out   of   Exploration 


THE    HUNDRED    YEARS'    WAR 

and  along  the  Ohio,  what  is  called  the  "Old  French 
War,"  or  "French  and. Indian  War,"  began,  and  at 
its  very  outset  a  convention  of  delegates  met  in 
Albany,  coming  from  New  England,  New  York,  Penn- 
sylvania, and  Maryland.  It  was  called  by  advice  of 
the  British  ministry,  and  a  committee  of  one  from 
each  colony  was  appointed  to  consider  a  plan  of 
union.  No  successful  plan  followed,  and  a  sarcastic 
Mohawk  chief  said  to  the  colonists:  "You  desired  us 
to  open  our  minds  and  hearts  to  you.  Look  at  the 
French ;  they  are  men ;  they  are  fortifying  everywhere. 
But,  we  are  ashamed  to  say  it,  you  are  like  women, 
without  any  fortifications.  It  is  but  one  step  from 
Canada  hither,  and  the  French  may  easily  come  and 
turn  you  out-of-doors." 

For  the  eight  years  following  it  seemed  more  than 
likely  that  the  description  would  be  fulfilled.  The 
French  kept  resolutely  at  work,  building  forts  and 
establishing  garrisons,  until  they  had  a  chain  of  some 
sixty  that  reached  from  Quebec  to  New  Orleans. 
Vainly  did  the  Governor  of  Virginia  send  Washington, 
then  a  youth  of  twenty-one,  to  remonstrate  with  the 
French  officers  in  1753;  he  traversed  the  unbroken 
forests  and  crossed  freezing  rivers  on  rafts  of  ice; 
but  to  no  result,  except  that  it  all  contributed  to  the 
training  of  the  future  general.  The  English  colonists 
achieved  some  easy  successes — as  in  dispersing  and 
removing  the  so-called  "French  neutrals"  in  Acadia 
— a  people  whose  neutrality,  though  guaranteed  by 
treaty,  did  not  prevent  them  from  constantly  recruit- 
ing the  enemy's  forces,  and  who  were  as  inconvenient 
for  neighbors  as  they  are  now  picturesque  in  history. 
But  when  Braddock  came  with  an  army  of  English  vet- 
erans to  lead  the  colonial  force  he  was  ignominiously 

181 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

defeated,  near  what  is  now  Pittsburg,  Pennsylvania 
(July  9,  1755),  and  Washington  and  the  provincial 
troops  had  to  cover  his  retreat.  All  along  the  line  of 
the  colonies  the  Indian  attacks  only  grew  more  terrible, 
the  French  telling  the  natives  that  the  time  had  now 
come  to  drive  the  English  from  the  soil.  In  Virginia, 
Washington  wrote  that  the  "supplicating  tears  of 
women  and  the  moving  petitions  of  the  men  melted 
him  with  deadly  sorrow."  Farther  north,  the  French 
General  Montcalm  took  fort  after  fort  with  apparent 
ease,  some  of  the  garrisons,  as  at  Fort  William  Henry, 
being  murdered  by  his  Indians.  "  For  God's  sake," 
wrote  the  officer  in  command  at  Albany  to  the  Gov- 
ernor of  Massachusetts,  "  exert  yourself  to  save  a  prov- 
ince! New  York  itself  may  fall.  Save  a  country! 
Prevent  the  downfall  of  the  British  government!" 
Dr.  Jeremy  Belknap,  whom  Bryant  declares  to  have 
been  the  first  person  who  made  American  history 
attractive,  thus  summed  up  the  gloomy  situation  in 
the  spring  of  1757 :  "The  great  expense,  the  frequent 
disappointments,  the  loss  of  men,  of  forts,  of  stores, 
was  very  discouraging.  The  enemy's  country  was 
filled  with  prisoners  and  scalps,  private  plunder  and 
public  stores,  and  provisions  which  our  people,  as 
beasts  of  burden,  had  conveyed  to  them.  These  re- 
flections were  the  dismal  accompaniment  of  the 
winter." 

What  turned  the  scale  was  the  energy  of  the  new 
secretary  of  state,  William  Pitt.  Under  his  inspira- 
tion the  colonies  raised  men  "  like  magic,"  we  are  told ; 
the  home  government  furnishing  arms,  equipments, 
and  supplies,  the  colonies  organizing,  uniforming,  and 
paying  the  troops,  with  a  promise  of  reimbursement. 
Events  followed  in  quick  succession.     Abercrombie 

182 


THE    HUNDRED    YEARS'    WAR 

failed  at  Ticonderoga,  but  Bradstreet  took  Fort 
Frontenac ;  Prideaux  took  Niagara ;  Louisburg,  Crown 
Point,  and  even  Ticonderoga  itself  fell.  Quebec  was 
taken  in  1759,  Wolfe,  the  victor,  and  Montcalm,  the 
defeated,  dying  alike  almost  in  the  hour  when  the 
battle  was  decided.  Montreal  soon  followed;  and  in 
1763  the  Peace  of  Paris  surrendered  Canada  to  the 
English,  with  nearly  all  the  French  possessions  east 
of  the  Mississippi.  France  had  already  given  up  to 
Spain  all  her  claims  west  of  the  Mississippi,  and  her 
brilliant  career  as  an  American  power  was  over.  With 
her  the  Indian  tribes  were  also  quelled,  except  that 
the  brief  conspiracy  of  Pontiac  came  and  went  like 
the  last  flicker  of  an  expiring  candle;  then  the  flame 
vanished,  and  the  Hundred  Years'  War  was  at  an  end. 


VIII 

THE    SECOND    GENERATION   OF   ENG- 
LISHMEN   IN    AMERICA 

WHEN  a  modern  American  makes  a  pilgrimage, 
as  I  have  done,  to  the  English  village  church  at 
whose  altars  his  ancestors  once  ministered,  he  brings 
away  a  feeling  of  renewed  wonder  at  the  depth  of 
conviction  which  led  the  Puritan  clergy  to  forsake 
their  early  homes.  The  exquisitely  peaceful  features 
of  the  English  rural  landscape  —  the  old  Norman 
church,  half  ruined,  and  in  this  particular  case  re- 
stored by  aid  of  the  American  descendants  of  that 
high-minded  emigrant;  the  old  burial-ground  that 
surrounds  it,  a  haunt  of  such  peace  as  to  make  death 
seem  doubly  restful;  the  ancestral  oaks;  the  rooks 
that  soar  above  them;  the  flocks  of  sheep  drifting 
noiselessly  among  the  ancient  gravestones — all  speak 
of  such  tranquillity  as  the  eager  American  must  cross 
the  Atlantic  to  obtain.  No  Englishman  feels  these 
things  as  the  American  feels  them;  the  antiquity,  as 
Hawthorne  says,  is  our  novelty.  But  beyond  all  the 
charm  of  the  associations  this  thought  always  recurs 
— what  love  of  their  convictions,  what  devotion  to 
their  own  faith,  must  have  been  needed  to  drive  the 
educated  Puritan  clergymen  from  such  delicious  re- 
treats to  encounter  the  ocean,  the  forest,  and  the 
Indians ! 

184 


ENGLISHMEN    IN    AMERICA 

Yet  there  was  in  the  early  emigration  to  every 
American  colony  quite  another  admixture  than  that 
of  learning  and  refinement ;  a  sturdy  yeoman  element, 
led  by  the  desire  to  better  its  condition  and  create  a 
new  religious  world  around  it;  and  an  adventurous 
element,  wishing  for  new  excitements.  The  popular 
opinion  of  that  period  did  not  leave  these  considera- 
tions out  of  sight,  as  may  be  seen  by  this  London 
street  ballad  of  1640,  describing  the  emigration: 

"Our  company  we  feare  not,  there  goes  my  Cosen  Hanna, 

And  Ruben  doe  perswade  to  goe  his  sister  faire  Susanna, 

Wth  Abigail  and  Lidia,  and  Ruth  noe  doubt  comes  after, 

And  Sara  kinde  will  not  stay  behinde  my  Cosen  Constance 

dafter— 

Then  for  the  truth's  sake  goe. 

"Nay  Tom  Tyler  is  p'pared,  and  ye  Smith  as  black  as  a  cole, 
And  Ralph  Cobbler  too  wth  us  will  goe  for  he  regards  his 

soale, 
And    the    weaver    honest    Lyman,    wth    Prudence   Jacobs 

daughter, 
And  Agatha  and  Barrbarra  professeth  to  come  after — 
Then  for  the  truth's  sake  goe." 

There  were  also  traces,  in  the  emigration,  of  that 
love  of  wandering,  of  athletic  sports  and  woodcraft, 
that  still  sends  young  men  of  English  race  to  the  far 
corners  of  the  earth.  In  the  Virginia  colonization 
this  element  was  large,  but  it  also  entered  into  the 
composition  of  the  northern  colonies.  The  sister 
of  Governor  Winthrop  wrote  from  England,  in  1637, 
of  her  son,  afterwards  Sir  George  Downing,  that  the 
boy  was  anxious  to  go  to  New  England;  and  she 
spoke  of  the  hazard  that  he  was  in  "by  reson  of  both 
his  father's  and  his  owne  strange  inclination  to  the 

185 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

plantation  sports."  Upham  accordingly  describes 
this  same  youth  in  Harvard  College,  where  he  grad- 
uated in  1642,  as  shooting  birds  in  the  wild  woods 
of  Salem  and  setting  duck-decoys  in  the  ponds.  Life 
in  the  earlier  days  of  the  emigration  was  essentially  a 
border  life,  a  forest  life,  a  frontier  life — differing  from 
such  life  in  Australia  or  Colorado  mainly  in  one  wild 
dream  which  certainly  added  to  its  romance— the 
dream  that  Satan  still  ruled  the  forest,  and  that  the 
Indians  were  his  agents. 

Whatever  else  may  be  said  of  the  Puritan  emigra- 
tion, it  represented  socially  and  intellectually  much 
of  what  was  best  in  the  mother-country.  Men  whose 
life  in  England  would  have  been  that  of  the  higher 
class  of  gentry  might  have  been  seen  in  New  England 
taking  with  their  own  hands  from  the  barrel  their  last 
measure  of  corn,  and  perhaps  interrupted  by  the 
sight  of  a  vessel  arriving  in  the  harbor  with  supplies. 
These  men,  who  ploughed  their  own  fields  and  shot 
their  own  venison,  were  men  who  had  paced  the  halls 
of  Emanuel  College  at  Cambridge,  who  quoted  Seneca 
in  their  journals  of  travel,  and  who  brought  with 
them  books  of  classic  literature  among  their  works 
of  theology.  The  library  bequeathed  by  the  Rev. 
John  Harvard  to  the  infant  college  at  Cambridge  in- 
cluded Homer,  Pliny,  Sallust,  Terence,  Juvenal,  and 
Horace.  The  library  bought  by  the  commissioners 
from  the  Rev.  Mr.  Welde,  for  the  Rev.  Mr.  Eliot,  had 
in  it  Plutarch's  Morals  and  the  plays  of  Aristophanes. 
In  its  early  poverty  the  colony  voted  £400  to  found 
Harvard  College,  and  that  institution  had  for  its 
second  president  a  man  so  learned,  after  the  fashion 
of  those  days,  that  he  had  the  Hebrew  Bible  read  to 
the  students  in  the   morning  and  the  Greek  Testa- 

186 


ENGLISHMEN    IN    AMERICA 

ment  in  the  afternoon,  commenting  on  both  extem- 
poraneously in  Latin.  The  curriculum  of  the  insti- 
tution was  undoubtedly  devised  rather  with  a  view 
to  making  learned  theologians  than  elegant  men  of 
letters  —  thus  much  may  be  conceded  to  Matthew 
Arnold ;  but  this  was  quite  as  much  the  case,  as  Mr. 
Mullinger  has  shown,  in  the  English  Cambridge  of 
the  seventeenth  century. 

The  year  1650  may  be  roughly  taken  as  closing 
the  first  generation  of  the  American  colonists.  Vir- 
ginia had  then  been  settled  forty-three  years,  New 
York  thirty-six,  Plymouth  thirty,  Massachusetts  Bay 
twenty-two,  Maryland  nineteen,  Connecticut  seven- 
teen, Rhode  Island  fourteen,  New  Haven  twelve,  and 
Delaware  twelve.  A  variety  of  industries  had  already 
been  introduced,  especially  in  the  New  England  colo- 
nies. Boat-building  had  there  begun,  according  to 
Carroll  D.  Wright,  in  1624;  brick  -  making,  tan- 
ning, and  windmills  were  introduced  in  1629;  shoe- 
making  and  saw-mills  in  1635;  cloth-mills  in  1638; 
printing  the  year  after;  and  iron  foundries  in  1644. 
In  Virginia  the  colony  had  come  near  to  extinction 
in  1624,  and  had  revived  under  wholly  new  leader- 
ship. In  New  England,  Brewster,  Winthrop,  Hig- 
ginson,  Skelton,  Shepard,  and  Hooker  had  all  died; 
Bradford,  Endicott,  Standish,  Winslow,  Eliot,  and 
Roger  Williams  were  still  living,  but  past  their  prime. 
Church  and  State  were  already  beginning  to  be  pos- 
sessed by  a  younger  race,  who  had  either  been  born 
in  America  or  been  brought  as  young  children  to  its 
shores.  In  this  coming  race,  also,  the  traditions  of 
learning  prevailed;  the  reading  of  Cotton  Mather, 
for  instance,  was  as  marvellous  as  his  powers  of 
memory.     When    he    entered    Harvard    College,    at 

187 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

eleven,  he  had  read  Cicero,  Terence,  Ovid,  Virgil, 
and  the  Greek  Testament;  wrote  Latin  with  ease; 
was  reading  Homer,  and  had  begun  the  Hebrew 
grammar.  But  the  influences  around  these  men  were 
stern  and  even  gloomy,  though  tempered  by  scholar- 
ship, by  the  sweet  charities  of  home,  and  by  some 
semblance  of  relaxation.  We  can  hardly  say  that 
there  was  nothing  but  sternness  when  we  find  the 
Rev.  Peter  Thacher  at  Barnstable,  Massachusetts — 
a  man  of  high  standing  in  the  churches — mitigating 
the  care  of  souls,  in  1679,  by  the  erection  of  a  private 
nine-pin  alley  on  his  own  premises.  Still  there  was 
for  a  time  a  distinct  deepening  of  shadow  around  the 
lives  of  the  Puritans,  whether  in  the  northern  or 
southern  colonies,  after  they  were  left  wholly  to 
themselves  upon  the  soil  of  the  New  World.  The 
persecutions  and  the  delusions  belong  generally  to 
this  later  epoch.  In  the  earlier  colonial  period  there 
would  have  been  no  time  for  them,  and  hardly  any 
inclination.  In  the  later  or  provincial  period  society 
was  undergoing  a  change,  and  wealth  and  aristo- 
cratic ways  of  living  were  being  introduced.  But 
it  was  in  the  intermediate  time  that  religious  rigor 
had  its  height. 

Modern  men  habitually  exaggerate  the  difference 
between  themselves  and  the  Puritans.  The  points 
of  difference  are  so  great  and  so  picturesque,  we  for- 
get that  the  points  of  resemblance,  after  all,  outweigh 
them.  We  seem  more  remote  from  them  than  is 
really  the  case,  because  we  dwell  too  much  on  second- 
ary matters — a  garment,  a  phrase,  a  form  of  service. 
Theologian  and  historian  are  alike  overcome  by  this; 
as  soon  as  they  touch  the  Puritans  all  is  sombre, 
there  is  no  sunshine,  no  bird  sings.     Yet  the  birds 

188 


ENGLISHMEN    IN    AMERICA 

filled  the  woods  with  their  music  then  as  now;  chil- 
dren played ;  mothers  talked  pretty  nonsense  to  their 
babies;  Governor  Winthrop  wrote  tender  messages 
to  his  third  wife  in  a  way  that  could  only  have  come 
of  long  and  reiterated  practice.  We  cannot  associate 
a  gloomy  temperament  with  Miles  Standish's  doughty 
defiances,  or  with  Francis  Higginson's  assertion  that 
' '  a  draught  of  New  England  air  is  better  than  a  flagon 
of  Old  English  ale."  Their  lives,  like  all  lives,  were 
tempered  and  moulded  by  much  that  was  quite  apart 
from  theology — hard  work  in  the  woods,  fights  with 
the  Indians,  and  less  perilous  field  sports.  They  were 
unlike  modern  men  when  they  were  at  church,  but 
not  so  unlike  when  they  went  on  a  bear-hunt. 

In  order  to  understand  the  course  of  Puritan  life 
in  America,  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  the  first- 
comers  in  the  most  strictly  Puritan  colonies  were 
more  and  not  less  liberal  than  their  immediate  de- 
scendants. The  Plymouth  colony  was  more  tolerant 
than  the  later  colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  and  the 
first  church  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  colony  was 
freer  than  those  which  followed  it.  The  covenant 
drawn  up  for  this  Salem  church  in  1629  has  seldom 
been  surpassed  in  benignant  comprehensiveness;  it 
is  thought  that  the  following  words  constituted  the 
whole  of  it:  "We  covenant  with  the  Lord  and  one 
with  another,  and  do  bind  ourselves,  in  the  presence 
of  God,  to  walk  together  in  all  His  ways,  according 
as  He  is  pleased  to  reveal  Himself  to  us  in  His  blessed 
word  of  truth."  This  was  drawn  up,  according  to 
Mather,  by  the  first  minister  of  Salem;  and  even 
when  this  covenant  was  enlarged  into  a  confession  of 
faith  by  his  son  and  successor,  some  years  later,  it 
nevertheless  remained  more  liberal  than  many  later 

189 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

covenants.  The  trouble  was  that  the  horizon  for  a 
time  narrowed  instead  of  widened.  The  isolation 
and  privations  of  the  colonial  life  produced  their  in- 
evitable effect,  and  this  tendency  grew  as  the  new 
generation  developed. 

But  it  must  be  noticed  that  even  this  early  liberal- 
ity never  went  so  far  as  to  lay  down  any  high-sound- 
ing general  principles  of  religious  liberty,  or  to  an- 
nounce that  as  the  corner-stone  of  the  new  enterprise. 
Here  it  is  that  great  and  constant  injustice  is  done 
— in  attributing  to  these  Puritans  a  principle  of  tol- 
eration which  they  never  set  up,  and  then  reproach- 
ing them  with  being  false  to  it.  Even  Francis  Park- 
man,  who  seems  to  me  to  be,  within  his  own  domain, 
unquestionably  the  first  of  American  historians,  loses 
his  habit  of  justice  when  he  quits  his  Frenchmen  and 
his  Indians  and  deals  with  the  Puritans.  "At  the 
outset,"  he  says,  in  his  Pioneers  of  France, "  New  Eng- 
land was  unfaithful  to  the  principles  of  her  existence. 
Seldom  has  religious  toleration  assumed  a  form  more 
oppressive  than  among  the  Puritan  exiles.  New 
England  Protestantism  appealed  to  liberty;  then 
closed  the  door  against  her.  On  a  stock  of  freedom 
she  grafted  a  scion  of  despotism."  Surely  this  is  the 
old  misstatement  often  made,  often  refuted.  When 
were  those  colonists  unfaithful  to  their  own  principle  ? 
When  did  they  appeal  to  liberty  ?  They  appealed  to 
truth.  It  would  have  been  far  better  and  nobler 
had  they  aimed  at  both,  but  in  this  imperfect  world 
we  have  often  to  praise  and  venerate  men  for  a  single 
virtue.  Anything  but  the  largest  toleration  would 
have  been  inconsistency  in  Roger  Williams,  or  per- 
haps— for  this  is  less  clearly  established — in  Lord 
Baltimore;  but  in  order  to  show  that  the  Puritans 

190 


ENGLISHMEN    IN    AMERICA 

were  false  to  religious  liberty,  it  must  be  shown  that 
they  had  proclaimed  it.  On  the  contrary,  what  they 
sought  to  proclaim  was  religious  truth.  They  lost 
the  expansive  influence  of  freedom,  but  they  gained 
the  propelling  force  of  a  high  though  gloomy  faith. 
They  lost  the  variety  that  exists  in  a  liberal  com- 
munity where  each  man  has  his  own  opinion,  but 
they  gained  the  concentrated  power  of  a  homogeneous 
and  well-ordered  people. 

There  are  but  two  of  the  early  colonies  of  which 
the  claim  can  be  seriously  made  that  they  were  found- 
ed on  any  principle  of  religious  freedom.  These  two 
are  Rhode  Island  and  Maryland.  It  was  said  of  the 
first  by  Roger  Williams,  its  spiritual  founder,  that  "a 
permission  of  the  most  paganish',  Jewish,  Turkish,  or 
an  ti  -  Christian  conscience"  should  be  there  granted 
1  •  to  all  men  of  all  nations  and  countries. ' '  Accordingly, 
the  colony  afforded  such  shelter  on  a  very  wide  scale. 
It  received  Anne  Hutchinson  after  she  had  set  the 
State  as  well  as  Church  in  a  turmoil  at  Boston,  and  had 
made  popular  elections  turn  on  her  opinions.  It  not 
only  sheltered  but  gave  birth  to  Jemima  Wilkinson, 
prophetess  of  the  "Cumberland  Zealots,"  who  might, 
under  the  stimulus  of  a  less  tolerant  community, 
have  expanded  into  a  Joanna  Southcote  or  a  Mother 
Ann  Lee.  It  protected  Samuel  Gorton,  a  man  of  the 
Savonarola  temperament,  of  whom  his  last  surviving 
disciple  said,  in  1771,  "My  master  wrote  in  heaven, 
and  none  can  understand  his  writings  but  those  who 
live  in  heaven  while  on  earth."  It  cost  such  an  effort 
to  assimilate  these  exciting  ingredients  that  Roger 
Williams  described  Gorton,  in  1640,  as  "bewitching 
and  bemadding  poor  Providence,"  and  the  grand 
jury  of  Portsmouth,  Rhode  Island,  was  compelled  to 

191 


HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

indict  him  as  a  nuisance  in  the  same  year,  on  this 
count,  among  others,  "that  Samuel  Gorton  contume- 
liously  reproached  the  magistrates,  calling  them  Just- 
asses."  Nevertheless,  all  these,  and  such  as  these, 
were  at  last  disarmed  and  made  harmless  by  the  wise 
policy  of  Rhode  Island,  guided  by  Roger  Williams, 
after  he  had  outgrown  the  superfluous  antagonisms 
of  his  youth,  and  had  learned  to  be  conciliatory  in 
action  as  well  as  comprehensive  in  doctrine.  Yet 
even  he  had  so  much  to  undergo  in  keeping  the  peace 
with  all  these  heterogeneous  materials  that  he  re- 
coiled at  last  from  "such  an  infinite  liberty  of  con- 
science," and  declared  that  in  the  case  of  Quakers 
"a  due  and  moderate  restraint  and  punishment  of 
these  incivilities"  was  not  only  no  persecution,  but 
was  "a  duty  and  command  of  God." 

Maryland  has  shared  with  Rhode  Island  the  honor 
of  having  established  religious  freedom,  and  this  claim 
is  largely  based  upon  the  noble  decree  passed  by  its 
General  Assembly  in  1649 : 

"No  person  whatsoever  in  this  province  professing  to  be- 
lieve in  Jesus  Christ  shall  from  henceforth  be  any  way 
troubled  or  molested  for  his  or  her  religion,  or  in  the  free 
exercise  thereof,  or  any  way  compelled  to  the  belief  or  exer- 
cise of  any  other  religion  against  his  or  her  consent." 

But  it  is  never  hard  to  evade  a  statute  that  seems 
to  secure  religious  liberty,  and  this  decree  did  not 
prevent  the  Maryland  colony  from  afterwards  enact- 
ing that  if  any  person  should  deny  the  Holy  Trinity 
he  should  first  be  bored  through  the  tongue  and  fined 
or  imprisoned ;  that  for  the  second  offence  he  should 
be  branded  as  a  blasphemer,  the  letter  "B"  being 
stamped  on  his  forehead;  and  for  the  third  offence 

192 


ENGLISHMEN    IN    AMERICA 

should  die.  This  was  certainly  a  very  limited  tolera- 
tion ;  and  granting  that  it  has  a  partial  value,  it  re- 
mains an  interesting  question  who  secured  it.  Car- 
dinal Manning  and  others  have  claimed  this  measure 
of  toleration  as  due  to  the  Roman  Catholics,  but  Mr. 
E.  D.  Neill  has  conclusively  shown  that  the  Roman 
Catholic  element  was  originally  much  smaller  than 
was  supposed,  that  the  "two  hundred  Catholic  gen- 
tlemen" usually  claimed  as  founding  the  colony  were 
really  some  twenty  gentlemen  and  three  hundred  la- 
boring men;  that  of  the  latter  twelve  died  on  ship- 
board, of  whom  only  two  confessed  to  the  priests, 
thus  giving  a  clew  to  the  probable  opinions  of  the 
rest ;  and  that  of  the  Assembly  which  passed  the  reso- 
lutions the  majority  were  probably  Protestants,  and 
even  Puritans.  But  granting  to  Maryland  a  place 
next  to  Rhode  Island  in  religious  freedom,  she  paid, 
like  that  other  colony,  what  was  then  the  penalty  of 
freedom ;  and  I  must  dwell  a  moment  on  this. 

In  those  days  religious  liberty  brought  a  hetero- 
geneous and  often  reckless  population;  it  usually  in- 
volved the  absence  of  a  highly  educated  ministry; 
and  this  implied  the  want  of  a  settled  system  of  edu- 
cation and  of  an  elevated  standard  of  public  duty. 
These  deficiencies  left  both  in  Rhode  Island  and  in 
Maryland  certain  results  which  are  apparent  to  this 
day.  There  is  nothing  more  extraordinary  in  the 
Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  colonies  than  the 
promptness  with  which  they  entered  on  the  work  of 
popular  instruction.  These  little  communities,  just 
struggling  for  existence,  marked  out  an  educational 
system  which  had  then  hardly  a  parallel  in  the 
European  world.  In  the  Massachusetts  Bay  colony, 
Salem  had  a  free  school  in  1640,  Boston  in  1642,  or 
13  i93 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

earlier,  Cambridge  about  the  same  time;  and  the 
State,  in  1647,  marked  out  an  elaborate  system  of 
common  and  grammar  schools  for  every  township — ■ 
a  system  then  without  a  precedent,  so  far  as  I 
know,  in  Europe.  Thus  ran  the  essential  sentences 
of  this  noble  document,  held  up  to  the  admira- 
tion of  all  England  by  Lord  Macaulay  in  Parlia- 
ment: 

.  .  .  "Y*  learning  may  not  be  buried  in  ye  grave  of  or 
fathrs  in  ye  church  and  corhon wealth,  the  Lord  assisting 
or  endeavors — It  is  therefore  ordred,  y*  evry  township  in 
this  iurisdiction,  aftr  ye  Lord  heth  increased  y"1  to  ye  num- 
ber of  50  household1"5,  shall  then  forthwth  appoint  one  wthin 
their  towne  to  teach  all  such  children  as  shall  resort  to  him 
to  write  and  reade ;  .  .  .  and  it  is  furtlv"  ordered,  y*  where  any 
towne  shall  increase  to  ye  numbr  of  100  families  or  house- 
hould5,  they  shall  set  up  a  gramer  schoole,  ye  mr  thereof 
being  able  to  instruct  youth  so  farr  as  they  may  be  fitted 
for  ye  university." 

The  printing-press  came  with  these  schools,  or  be- 
fore them,  and  was  actively  employed,  and  it  is  im- 
possible not  to  recognize  the  contrast  between  such 
institutions  and  the  spirit  of  that  Governor  of  Vir- 
ginia (Berkeley)  who  said,  a  quarter  of  a  century 
later,  "We  have  no  free  schools  nor  printing,  and  I 
hope  shall  not  have  these  hundred  years."  In  Mary- 
land, convicts  and  indented  servants  were  sometimes 
advertised  for  sale  as  teachers  at  an  early  day,  and 
there  was  no  public  system  until  1728.  In  Rhode 
Island,  Newport  had  a  public  school  in  1640,  but  it 
apparently  lasted  but  a  year  or  two,  nor  was  there 
a  general  system  till  the  year  1800.  These  contrasts 
are  mentioned  for  one  sole  purpose :  to  show  that  no 
single  community  unites  all  virtues,  and  that  it  was 

194 


ENGLISHMEN    IN    AMERICA 

at  that  period  very  hard  for  religious  liberality  and 
a  good  school  system  to  exist  together. 

There  was  a  similar  irregularity  among  the  colonies 
in  the  number  of  university- trained  men.  Professor 
F.  B.  Dexter  has  shown  that  no  less  than  sixty  such 
men  joined  the  Massachusetts  Bay  colony  within  ten 
years  of  its  origin,  while  after  seventeen  years  of 
separate  existence  the  Virginia  colony  held  but  two 
university  men,  Rev.  Hant  Wyatt  and  Dr.  Pott ;  and 
Rhode  Island  had  also  but  two  in  its  early  days, 
Roger  Williams  and  the  recluse  William  Blaxton.  No 
one  has  more  fully  recognized  the  "  heavy  price  paid" 
for  this  "great  cup  of  liberty"  in  Rhode  Island  than 
her  able  scholar,  Professor  Diman,  who  employed 
precisely  these  phrases  to  describe  it  in  his  Bristol 
address ;  and  who  fearlessly  pointed  out  how  much 
that  State  lost,  even  while  she  gained  something,  by 
the  absence  of  that  rigorous  sway  and  that  lofty  pub- 
lic standard  which  were  associated  with  the  stern 
rule  of  the  Puritan  clergy. 

In  all  the  early  colonies,  unless  we  except  Rhode 
Island,  the  Puritan  spirit  made  itself  distinctly  felt, 
and  religious  persecution  widely  prevailed.  Even  in 
Maryland,  as  has  been  shown,  the  laws  imposed 
branding  and  boring  through  the  tongue  as  a  penalty 
for  certain  opinions.  In  Virginia  those  who  refused 
to  attend  the  Established  Church  must  pay  200 
pounds  of  tobacco  for  the  first  offence,  500  for  the 
second,  and  incur  banishment  for  the  third.  A  fine 
of  5000  pounds  of  tobacco  was  placed  upon  unau- 
thorized religious  meetings.  Quakers  and  Baptists 
were  whipped  or  pilloried,  and  any  ship-master  con- 
veying Nonconformists  was  fined.  Even  so  late  as 
1 741,  after  persecution  had  virtually  ceased  in  New 

*95 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

England,  severe  laws  were  passed  against  Presbyte- 
rians in  Virginia ;  and  the  above-named  laws  of  Mary- 
land were  re-enacted  in  1723.  At  an  earlier  period, 
however,  the  New  England  laws,  if  not  severer,  were 
no  doubt  more  rigorously  executed.  In  some  cases, 
to  be  sure,  the  so-called  laws  were  a  deliberate 
fabrication,  as  in  the  case  of  certain  Connecticut 
''Blue  Laws,"  a  code  reprinted  to  this  day  in 
the  newspapers,  but  which  existed  only  in  the 
active  and  malicious  imagination  of  the  Tory  Dr. 
Peters. 

The  spirit  of  persecution  was  strongest  in  the  New 
England  colonies,  and  chiefly  in  Massachusetts,  be- 
cause of  the  greater  intensity  with  which  men  there 
followed  out  their  convictions.  It  was  less  manifest 
in  the  banishment  of  Roger  Williams — which  was, 
after  all,  not  so  much  a  religious  as  a  political  trans- 
action— than  in  the  Quaker  persecutions  which  took 
place  between  1656  and  1660.  Whatever  minor  ele- 
ments may  have  entered  into  the  matter,  these  were 
undoubtedly  persecutions  based  on  religious  grounds, 
and  are  therefore  to  be  utterly  condemned.  Yet 
they  were  not  quite  so  bad  as  a  class  of  persecutions 
which  had  become  familiar  in  Europe — forbidding 
heretics  to  leave  the  realm,  and  then  tormenting 
them  if  they  stayed.  Not  a  Quaker  ever  suffered 
death  except  for  voluntary  action — that  is,  for  choos- 
ing to  stay  or  to  return  after  banishment.  To  de- 
mand that  men  should  consent  to  be  banished  on 
pain  of  death  seems  to  us  an  outrage ;  but  it  seemed 
quite  otherwise,  we  must  remember,  to  those  who 
had  already  exiled  themselves,  in  order  to  secure  a 
spot  where  they  could  worship  in  their  own  way. 
Cotton  Mather  says,  with  some  force  : 

196 


ENGLISHMEN    IN    AMERICA 

"It  was  also  thought  that  the  very  Quakers  themselves 
would  say  that  if  they  had  got  into  a  Corner  of  the  World, 
and  with  an  immense  Toyl  and  Charge  made  a  Wilderness 
habitable,  on  purpose  there  to  be  undisturbed  in  the  Exer- 
cises of  their  Worship,  they  would  never  bear  to  have  New- 
Englanders  come  among  them  and  interrupt  their  Publick 
Worship,  endeavor  to  seduce  their  Children  from  it,  yea, 
and  repeat  such  Endeavors  after  mild  Entreaties  first,  and 
then  just  Banishments,  to  oblige  their  departure." 


We  now  see  that  this  place  they  occupied  was  not 
a  mere  corner  of  the  world,  and  that  it  was  even  then 
an  essential  part  of  the  British  dominions  and  sub- 
ject to  British  laws.  We  can  therefore  see  that  this 
was  not  the  whole  of  the  argument,  and  the  Quakers 
might  well  maintain  that  they  had  a  legal  right  to 
exercise  their  religion  in  America.  The  colonists 
seem  to  me  to  have  strained  much  too  far  the  power 
given  them  in  their  patent  to  ''encounter,  expulse, 
repel,  and  resist"  all  invaders  when  they  applied  it 
to  these  unwarlike  visitors.  Yet  the  Quakers  were 
in  a  sense  invaders,  nevertheless ;  their  able  defender, 
R.  C.  Hallowell,  concedes  as  much  when  he  entitles 
his  history  The  Quaker  Invasion  of  New  England;  and 
if  an  invasion  it  was,  then  Cotton  Mather's  argu- 
mentum  ad  hominem  was  quite  to  the  point.  Had  the 
Quakers,  like  the  Moravians,  made  settlements  and 
cleared  the  forests  for  themselves,  this  argument 
would  have  been  quite  disarmed;  and  had  those  set- 
tlements been  interfered  with  by  the  Puritans,  the 
injustice  would  have  been  far  more  glaring;  nor  is  it 
probable  that  the  Puritans  would  have  molested  such 
colonies — unless  they  happened  to  be  too  near. 

It  must  be  remembered,  too,  that  the  Puritans  did 
not  view  Quakers  and  other  zealots  as  heretics  merely, 

197 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

but  as  dangerous  social  outlaws.  There  was  among 
the  colonists  a  genuine  and  natural  fear  that  if  the 
tide  of  extravagant  fanaticism  once  set  in,  it  might 
culminate  in  such  atrocities  as  had  shocked  all  Europe 
while  the  Anabaptists,  under  John  of  Leyden,  were  in 
power  at  Minister.  In  the  frenzied  and  naked  ex- 
hibitions of  Lydia  Wardwell  and  Deborah  Wilson 
they  saw  tendencies  which  might  end  in  uprooting 
all  the  social  order  for  which  they  were  striving,  and 
might  lead  at  last  to  the  revocation  of  their  char- 
ter. I  differ  with  the  greatest  unwillingness  from 
my  old  friend  John  G.  Whittier  in  his  explanation 
of  a  part  of  these  excesses.  He  thinks  that  these 
naked  performances  came  from  persons  who  were 
maddened  by  seeing  the  partial  exposure  of  Quakers 
whipped  through  the  streets.  This  view,  though 
plausible,  seems  to  me  to  overlook  the  highly  wrought 
condition  of  mind  among  these  enthusiasts,  and  the 
fact  that  they  regarded  everything  as  a  symbol. 
When  one  of  the  very  ablest  of  the  Quakers,  Robert 
Barclay,  walked  the  streets  of  Aberdeen  in  sackcloth 
and  ashes,  he  deemed  it  right  to  sacrifice  all  propriety 
for  the  sake  of  a  symbolic  act;  and  in  just  the  same 
spirit  we  find  the  Quaker  writers  of  that  period 
defending  these  personal  exposures,  not  by  Whit- 
tier's  reasons,  but  for  symbolic  ones.  In  Southey's 
Commonplace -Bo  ok  there  is  a  long  extract,  to  pre- 
cisely this  effect,  from  the  life  of  Thomas  Story,  an 
English  Friend  who  had  travelled  in  America.  He 
seems  to  have  been  a  moderate  man,  and  to  have  con- 
demned some  of  the  extravagances  of  the  Ranters, 
but  gravely  argues  that  the  Quakers  might  really  have 
been  commanded  by  God  to  exhibit  their  nakedness 
"as  a  sign." 

198 


ENGLISHMEN    IN    AMERICA 

Whatever  provocation  the  Friends  may  have  given, 
their  persecution  is  the  darkest  blot  upon  the  history 
of  the  time — darker  than  witchcraft,  which  was  a 
disease  of  supernatural  terror.     And  like  the  belief 
in  witchcraft,  the  spirit  of  persecution  could  only  be 
palliated  by  the  general  delusion  of  the  age,  by  the 
cruelty  of  the  English  legislation  against  the  Jesuits, 
which  the  Puritan  legislation  closely  followed  as  re- 
garded Quakers;  and  in  general  by  the  attempt  to 
unite  Church  and  State,  and  to  take  the  Old  Testa- 
ment for  a  literal  modern  statute-book.     It  must  be 
remembered  that  our  horror  at  this  intolerance  is 
also  stimulated  from  time  to  time  by  certain  ex- 
travagant fabrications  which  still  appear  as  genuine 
in  the  newspapers;  as  that  imaginary  letter  said  to 
have  been  addressed  by  Cotton  Mather  to  a  Salem 
clergyman  in  1682,  and  proposing  that  a  colony  of 
Quakers  be  arrested  and  sold  as  slaves.     This  absurd 
forgery  appeared  first  in  some  Pennsylvania  news- 
paper, accompanied  by  the  assertion  that  this  letter 
was  in  possession   of  the   Massachusetts   Historical 
Society.     No  such  paper  was  ever  known  to  that 
society;  Cotton  Mather  was,  at  the  time  alleged,  but 
nineteen  years  old,  and  the  Quaker  persecution  had 
substantially  ceased  twenty  years  before.     But  when 
did  such  contradictions  ever  have  any  effect  on  the 
vitality  of  a  lie  ? 

The  dark  and  intense  convictions  of  Puritanism 
were  seen  at  their  sternest  in  the  witchcraft  trials- 
events  which  took  place  in  almost  every  colony  at 
different  times.  The  wonder  is  that  they  showed 
themselves  so  much  less  in  America  than  in  most 
European  nations  at  the  same  period.  To  see  this 
delusion  in  its  most  frightful  form,  we  must  go  beyond 

199 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  Atlantic  and  far  beyond  the  limits  of  English 
Puritanism.  During  its  course  30,000  victims  were 
put  to  death  in  Great  Britain,  75,000  in  France, 
100,000  in  Germany,  besides  those  executed  in  Italy, 
Switzerland,  and  Sweden,  many  of  them  being  burned. 
Compared  with  this  vast  estimate,  which  I  take 
from  that  careful  historian  W.  F.  Poole,  how  trivial 
seem  the  dozen  cases  to  be  found  in  our  early  colonies ; 
and  yet,  as  Poole  justly  remarks,  these  few  have  at- 
tracted more  attention  from  the  world  than  all  the 
rest.  Howell,  the  letter-writer,  says,  under  date  of 
February  22,  1647:  "Within  the  compass  of  two 
years  near  upon  300  witches  were  arraigned,  and  the 
larger  part  of  them  executed,  in  Essex  and  Suffolk 
[England]  only.  Scotland  swarms  with  them  more 
and  more,  and  persons  of  good  quality  are  executed 
daily."  In  a  single  Swedish  village  threescore  and 
ten  witches  were  discovered,  most  of  whom,  includ- 
ing fifteen  children,  were  executed,  besides  thirty 
children  who  were  compelled  to  "run  the  gantlet" 
and  be  lashed  on  their  hands  once  a  week  for  a  year. 
The  eminent  English  judge  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  giving 
his  charge  at  the  trial  for  witchcraft  of  Rose  Cullender 
and  Anne  Duny  in  1668 — a  trial  which  had  great 
weight  with  the  American  judges — said  that  he 
"  made  no  doubt  there  were  such  Creatures  as  Witches, 
for  the  Scriptures  affirmed  it,  and  the  Wisdom  of  all 
Nations  had  provided  Laws  against  such  Persons." 
The  devout  Bishop  Hall  wrote  in  England:  "Satan's 
prevalency  in  this  Age  is  most  clear,  in  the  marvel- 
lous numbers  of  Witches  abiding  in  all  places.  Now 
hundreds  are  discovered  in  one  Shire."  It  shows 
that  there  was,  on  the  whole,  a  healthy  influence 
exerted  on  Puritanism  by  American  life  when  we  con- 

200 


ENGLISHMEN    IN    AMERICA 

sider  that   the  witchcraft   excitement  was   here   so 
limited  and  so  short-lived. 

The  first  recorded  case  of  execution  for  this  offence 
in  the  colonies  is  mentioned  in  Winthrop's  journal 
(March,  1646-47),  as  occurring  at  Hartford,  Connecti- 
cut, where  another  occurred  in  1648,  there  being  also 
one  in  Boston  that  same  year.  Nine  more  took  place 
in  Boston  and  in  Connecticut  before  the  great  out- 
break at  Salem.  A  curious  one  appears  in  the  Mary- 
land records  of  1654  as  having  happened  on  the  high 
seas  upon  a  vessel  bound  to  Baltimore,  where  a  wom- 
an was  hanged  by  the  seamen  upon  this  charge,  the 
case  being  afterwards  investigated  by  the  governor 
and  Council.  A  woman  was  tried  and  acquitted  in 
Pennsylvania  in  1683;  one  was  hanged  in  Maryland 
for  this  alleged  crime  by  due  sentence  of  court  in 
1685;  and  one  or  two  cases  occurred  at  New  York. 
The  excitement  finally  came  to  a  head  in  1692  at 
Salem,  Massachusetts,  where  nineteen  persons  were 
hanged,  and  one  "pressed  to  death"  for  refusing  to 
testify— this  being  the  regularly  ordained  punish- 
ment for  such  refusal.  The  excitement  being  thus 
relieved,  a  reaction  followed.  Brave  old  Samuel 
Sewall  won  for  himself  honor  in  all  coming  time  by 
rising  in  his  place  in  the  congregation  and  causing 
to  be  read  an  expression  of  regret  for  the  part  he  had 
taken  in  the  trials.  The  reaction  did  not  at  once 
reach  the  southern  colonies.  Grace  Sherwood  was 
legally  ducked  for  witchcraft  in  Virginia  in  1705,  and 
there  was  an  indictment,  followed  by  acquittal,  in 
Maryland  as  late  as  1712. 

That  the  delusion  reached  this  point  was  due  to 
no  hardened  inhumanity  of  feeling;  on  the  contrary, 
those  who  participated  in  it  prayed  to  be  delivered 

201 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

from  any  such  emotion.  "  If  a  drop  of  innocent  blood 
should  be  shed  in  the  prosecution  of  the  witchcrafts 
among  us,  how  unhappy  are  we!"  .wrote  Cotton 
Mather.  Accordingly  Poole  has  shown  that  this 
eminent  clergyman,  popularly  identified  beyond  any 
one  else  with  the  witchcraft  delusion,  yet  tried  to 
have  it  met  by  united  prayer  rather  than  by  the 
courts;  would  never  attend  any  of  the  witchcraft 
trials;  cautioned  the  magistrates  against  credulity, 
and  kept  secret  to  his  dying  day  the  names  of  many 
persons  privately  inculpated  by  the  witnesses  with 
whom  he  conversed.  It  was  with  anguish  of  spirit 
and  the  conscientious  fidelity  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
temperament  that  these  men  entered  upon  the  work. 
Happy  would  they  have  been  could  they  have  taken 
such  supposed  visitations  lightly,  as  the  Frenchmen 
on  this  continent  have  taken  them.  Champlain  fully 
believed,  as  has  been  already  stated,  that  there  was  a 
devil  under  the  name  of  the  Gougou  inhabiting  a  cer- 
tain island  in  the  St.  Lawrence;  but  he  merely  crossed 
himself,  carolled  a  French  song,  and  sailed  by.  Yet 
even  in  France,  as  has  been  seen,  the  delusion  raged 
enormously;  and  to  men  of  English  descent,  at  any 
rate,  it  was  no  such  light  thing  that  Satan  dwelt 
visibly  in  the  midst  of  them.  Was  this  to  be  the 
end  of  all  their  labors,  their  sacrifices?  They  had 
crossed  the  ocean,  fought  off  the  Indians,  cleared  the 
forest,  built  their  quaint  little  houses  in  the  clear- 
ing, extirpated  all  open  vice,  and  lo !  Satan  was  still 
there  in  concealment,  like  the  fabled  ghost  which 
migrated  with  the  family,  being  packed  among  the 
beds.  There  is  no  mistaking  the  intensity  of  their 
lament.  See  with  what  depth  of  emotion  Cotton 
Mather  utters  it : 

202 


ENGLISHMEN    IN    AMERICA 

'  Tis  a  dark  time,  yea  a  black  night  indeed,  now  the  Ty- 
dogs  of  the  Pit  are  abroad  among  us,  but  it  is  through  the 
ivrath  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts!  .  .  .  Blessed  Lord!  Are  all  the 
other  Instruments  of  thy  Vengeance  too  good  for  the  chas- 
tisement of  such  Transgressors  as  we  are?  Must  the  very 
Devils  be  sent  out  of  their  own  plasc  to  be  our  troublers  ?  .  .  . 
They  are  not  swarthy  Indians,  but  they,  are  sooty  Devils 
that  are  let  loose  upon  us." 

Thus  wrote  Cotton  Mather,  he  who  had  sat  at  the 
bedside  of  the  "bewitched"  Margaret  Rule  and  had 
distinctly  smelled  sulphur. 

While  the  English  of  the  second  generation  were 
thus  passing  through  a  phase  of  Puritanism  more 
intense  than  any  they  brought  with  them,  the  col- 
onies were  steadily  increasing  in  population,  and 
were  modifying  in  structure  towards  their  later 
shape.  Delaware  had  passed  from  Swedish  under 
Dutch  control,  Governor  Stuyvesant  having  taken 
possession  of  the  colony  in  1647  with  small  resistance. 
Then  the  whole  Dutch  territory,  thus  enlarged,  was 
transferred  to  English  dominion,  quite  against  the 
will  of  the  same  headstrong  governor,  known  as 
"  Hardkoppig  Piet."  The  Dutch  had  thriven,  in 
spite  of  their  patroons,  and  their  slaves,  and  their 
semblance  of  aristocratic  government ;  they  had  built 
forts  in  Connecticut,  claimed  Cape  Cod  for  a  boun- 
dary, and  even  stretched  their  demands  as  far  as 
Maine.  All  their  claims  and  possessions  were  at  last 
surrendered  without  striking  a  blow.  When  the 
British  fleet  appeared  off  Long  Island,  the  whole  or- 
ganized Dutch  force  included  only  some  two  hundred 
men  fit  for  duty,  scattered  from  Albany  to  Delaware ; 
the  inhabitants  of  New  Amsterdam  refused  to  take 
up  arms,  although  Governor  Stuyvesant  would  fain 

203 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

have  had  them,  and  he  was  so  enraged  that  he  tore 
to  pieces  the  letter  from  Nicolls,  the  English  com- 
mander, to  avoid  showing  it.  "The  surrender,"  he 
said,  "would  be  reproved  in  the  fatherland."  But 
the  people  utterly  refused  to  stand  by  him,  and  he 
was  thus  compelled,  sorely  against  his  will,  to  sur- 
render. The  English  entered  into  complete  occupa- 
tion; New  Netherland  became  New  York;  some  of 
the  Dutch  local  names  were  abolished,  although  des- 
tined to  be  restored  during  the  later  Dutch  occupa- 
tion, which  again  ceased  in  1674.  Yet  the  impress  of 
that  nationality  remains  to  this  day  on  the  names, 
the  architecture,  and  the  customs  of  that  region,  and 
has  indeed  tinged  those  of  the  whole  country;  and 
the  Dutch  had  securely  founded  what  was  from  its 
early  days  the  most  cosmopolitan  city  of  America. 

Their  fall  left  the  English  in  absolute  possession  of 
a  line  of  colonies  that  stretched  from  Maine  south- 
ward. This  now  included  some  new  settlements  made 
during  the  period  just  described.  Carolina,  as  it  had 
been  called  a  hundred  years  before  by  Jean  Ribaut 
and  his  French  Protestants,  was  granted  in  1663,  by 
King  Charles  the  Second,  to  eight  proprietors,  who 
brought  with  them  a  plan  of  government  framed  for 
them  by  the  celebrated  John  Locke — probably  the 
most  unpractical  scheme  of  government  ever  proposed 
for  a  new  colony  by  a  philosopher,  and  fortunately 
resisted  from  the  very  beginning  by  the  common- 
sense  of  the  colonists.  Being  the  most  southern  col- 
ony, Carolina  was  drawn  into  vexatious  wars  with 
the  Spaniards,  the  French,  and  the  Indians;  but  it 
was  many  years  before  it  was  divided  by  the  King 
into  two  parts,  and  before  Georgia  was  settled.  An- 
other grant  by  Charles  the  Second  was  more  wisely 

204 


ENGLISHMEN    IN    AMERICA 

planned,  when  in  1681  William  Penn  sent  out  some 
emigrants,  guided  by  no  philosopher  except  Penn 
himself,  who  came  the  following  year.  A  great  tract 
of  country  was  granted  to  him  as  a  sort  of  equivalent 
for  a  debt  owed  by  the  King  to  his  father,  Admiral 
Penn;  the  annual  rental  was  to  be  two  beaver-skins. 
Everything  seemed  to  throw  around  the  coming  of 
William  Penn  the  aspect  of  a  lofty  enterprise;  his 
ship  was  named  The  Welcome ;  his  new  city  was 
to  be  called  "Brotherly  Love,"  or  "Philadelphia." 
His  harmonious  relations  with  the  Indians  have  been 
the  wonder  of  later  times,  though  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  he  had  to  do  with  no  such  fierce  tribes  as 
had  devastated  the  other  colonies.  Peace  prevailed 
with  sectarian  zealots,  and  even  towards  those  charged 
with  witchcraft.  Yet  even  Philadelphia  did  not  es- 
cape the  evil  habits  of  the  age,  and  established  the 
whipping-post,  the  pillory,  and  the  stocks— the  for- 
mer of  which  Delaware,  long  a  part  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, still  retains.  But  there  is  no  such  scene  of 
contentment  in  our  pioneer  history  as  that  which 
the  early  annals  of  "  Penn's  Woods"  (Pennsylvania) 
record. 

Other  great  changes  were  meanwhile  taking  place. 
New  Hampshire  and  New  Jersey  came  to  be  recog- 
nized as  colonies  by  themselves;  the  union  of  the 
New  England  colonies  was  dissolved ;  Plymouth  was 
merged  in  Massachusetts,  New  Haven  in  Connecti- 
cut, Delaware  temporarily  in  Pennsylvania.  At  the 
close  of  the  period  which  I  have  called  the  second 
generation  (1700)  there  were  ten  distinct  English  col- 
onies along  the  coast —New  Hampshire,  Massachu- 
setts, Rhode  Island,  Connecticut,  New  York,  New 
Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Maryland,  Virginia,  Carolina. 

205 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

It  is  a  matter  of  profound  interest  to  observe  that 
whatever  may  be  the  variations  among  these  early  set- 
tlements, we  find  everywhere  the  distinct  traces  of  the 
old  English  village  communities,  which  again  are 
traced  by  Freeman  and  others  to  a  Swiss  or  German 
origin.  The  founders  of  the  first  New  England  towns 
did  not  simply  settle  themselves  upon  the  principle 
of  "squatter  sovereignty,"  each  for  himself;  but 
they  founded  municipal  organizations,  based  on  a 
common  control  of  the  land.  So  systematically  was 
this  carried  out  that  in  an  old  town  like  Cambridge, 
Massachusetts,  for  instance,  it  would  be  easy  at  this 
day,  were  all  the  early  tax-lists  missing,  to  determine 
the  comparative  worldly  condition  of  the  different 
settlers  simply  by  comparing  the  proportion  which 
each  had  to  maintain  of  the  great  "  pally sadoe,"  or 
paling,  which  surrounded  the  little  settlement.  These 
amounts  varied  from  seventy  rods,  in  case  of  the 
richest,  to  two  rods,  in  case  of  the  poorest;  and  so 
well  was  the  work  done  that  the  traces  of  the  "fosse " 
about  the  paling  still  remain  in  the  willow-trees  on 
the  old  playground  of  the  Harvard  students.  These 
early  settlers  reproduced,  though  with  important 
modifications,  those  local  institutions  which  had 
come  to  them  from  remote  ancestors.  The  town 
paling,  the  town  -  meeting,  the  town  common,  the 
town  pound,  the  fence-viewers,  the  field-drivers,  the 
militia  muster,  even  the  tipstaves  of  the  constables, 
are  "survivals"  of  institutions  older  than  the  Nor- 
man conquest  of  England.  Even  the  most  matter- 
of-fact  transactions  of  their  daily  life,  as  the  transfer 
of  land  by  giving  a  piece  of  turf,  an  instance  of  which 
occurred  at  Salem,  Massachusetts,  in  1696,  some- 
times carry  us  back  to  usages  absolutely  mediaeval — 

206 


ENGLISHMEN    IN    AMERICA 

in  this  case  to  the  transfer  "by  turf  and  twig,"  so 
familiar  to  historians,  although  it  is  unsafe  to  press 
these  analogies  too  far,  since  the  aboriginal  tribes 
sometimes  practised  the  same  usage.  A  material  ad- 
dition of  the  New  England  settlers  to  their  traditional 
institutions— in  reality  a  great  addition— was  the  sys- 
tem of  common  schools.  Beyond  New  England  the 
analogies  with  inherited  custom  are  less  clear  and  un- 
mistakable ;  but  it  is  now  maintained  that  the  south- 
ern "parish"  and  "county,"  the  South  Carolina 
''court-greens"  and  "common  pastures,"  as  well  as 
the  Maryland  "manors"  and  "courts-leet,"  all  repre- 
sent, under  different  combinations,  the  same  inher- 
ited principle  of  communal  sovereignty. 

The  period  which  I  have  assigned  to  the  second 
generation  in  America  may  be  considered  to  have 
lasted  from  1650  to  1700.  Even  during  this  period 
there  took  place  collisions  of  purpose  and  interest 
between  the  home  government  and  the  colonies.  The 
contest  for  the  charters,  for  instance,  and  the  short- 
lived power  of  Sir  Edmund  Andros,  occurred  within 
the  time  which  has  here  been  treated,  but  they  were 
the  forerunners  of  a  later  contest,  and  will  be  included 
in  another  chapter.  It  will  then  be  necessary  to  de- 
scribe the  gradual  transformation  which  made  col- 
onies into  provinces,  and  out  of  a  varied  emigration 
developed  a  homogeneous  people;  which  taught  the 
English  ministry  to  distrust  the  Americans,  while  it 
unconsciously  weaned  the  Americans  from  England ; 
so  that  the  tie  which  at  first  had  expressed  only  af- 
fection became  at  last  a  hated  yoke,  soon  to  be 
thrown  aside  forever. 


IX 

THE    BRITISH    YOKE 

HOW  deep  and  tender  was  the  love  with  which  the 
first  American  colonists  looked  back  to  their 
early  home !  Many  proofs  of  this  might  be  cited  from 
their  writings,  but  I  know  of  none  quite  so  eloquent 
as  that  burst  of  impassioned  feeling  in  a  sermon  by 
William  Hooke— cousin  and  afterwards  chaplain  of 
Oliver  Cromwell — who  came  to  America  about  1636, 
and  preached  this  discourse  at  Taunton,  July  3,  1640, 
under  the  title,  "  New  England's  Teares  for  Old  Eng- 
land's Feares."  This  whole  production  is  marked  by 
a  learning  and  eloquence  that  remind  us  of  one  who 
may  have  been  Hooke's  fellow-student  at  Oxford, 
Jeremy  Taylor;  indeed,  it  contains  a  description  of  a 
battle  which,  if  Taylor  had  written  it,  would  have 
been  quoted  in  every  history  of  English  literature 
until  this  day.  And  in  this  sermon  the  clergyman 
thus  speaks  of  the  mother-country: 

"There  is  no  Land  that  claimes  our  name  but  England; 
wee  are  distinguished  from  all  the  Nations  in  the  World  by 
the  name  of  English.  There  is  no  Potentate  breathing  that 
wee  call  our  dread  Sovereigne  but  King  Charles,  nor  Lawes 
of  any  Land  have  civilized  us  but  England's;  there  is  no 
Nation  that  calls  us  Countrey-men  but  the  English.  Breth- 
ren !  Did  wee  not  there  draw  in  our  first  breath  ?  Did  not 
the  Sunne  first  shine  there  upon  our  heads?  Did  not  that 
Land  first  beare  us,  even  that  pleasant  Island,  but  for  sinne, 
I  would  say,  that  Garden  of  the  Lord,  that  Paradise?" 

208 


THE    BRITISH    YOKE 

What  changed  all  this  deep  tenderness  into  the 
spirit  that  found  the  British  yoke  detestable  and  at 
length  cast  it  off  ? 

There  have  been  many  other  great  changes  in 
America  since  that  day.  The  American  fields  have 
been  altered  by  the  steady  advance  of  imported  weeds 
and  flowers;  the  buttercup,  the  dandelion,  and  the 
ox-eyed  daisy  displacing  the  anemone  and  violet. 
The  American  physique  is  changed  to  a  slenderer  and 
more  finely  organized  type;  the  American  tempera- 
ment has  grown  more  sensitive,  more  pliant,  more 
adaptive;  the  American  voice  has  been  shifted  to  a 
higher  key,  perhaps  yielding  greater  music  when  fitly 
trained.  Of  all  these  changes  we  see  the  result,  but 
cannot  trace  the  steps ;  and  it  is  almost  as  difficult  to 
trace  the  successive  impulses  by  which  the  love  of 
everything  that  was  English  was  transformed  into  a 
hatred  of  the  British  yoke. 

Yet  its  beginnings  may  be  observed  in  much  that 
the  colonists  did,  and  in  some  things  which  they 
omitted.  Within  ten  years  after  Hooke's  loving  ref- 
erence to  King  Charles,  there  was  something  omi- 
nous in  the  cool  self-control  with  which  the  people  of 
Massachusetts  refrained  from  either  approving  or  dis- 
approving his  execution.  It  was  equally  ominous 
when  they  abstained  from  recognizing  the  accession 
of  Richard  Cromwell,  and  when  they  let  fifteen 
months  pass  before  sending  a  congratulatory  address 
to  Charles  the  Second.  It  was  the  beginning  of  a 
policy  of  indifference  more  significant  than  any  policy 
of  resistance.  When  in  1660,  under  that  monarch,  the 
first  Act  of  Navigation  was  passed,  prescribing  that 
no  merchandise  should  be  imported  into  the  planta- 
tions but  in  English  vessels  navigated  by  English- 
14  209 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

men,  the  New  England  colonies  simply  ignored  it. 
During  sixteen  years  the  Massachusetts  governor,  an- 
nually elected  by  the  people,  never  once  took  the 
oath  which  the  Navigation  Acts  required  of  him ;  and 
when  the  courageous  Leverett  was  called  to  account 
for  this  he  answered,  "  The  King  can  in  reason  do  no 
less  than  let  us  enjoy  our  liberties  and  trade,  for  we 
have  made  this  large  plantation  of  our  own  charge, 
without  any  contribution  from  the  crown."  Four 
years  after  the  Act  of  Navigation,  in  1664,  the  Eng- 
lish fleet  brought  royal  commissioners  to  Boston, 
with  instructions  aiming  at  further  aggression;  and 
there  was  great  dignity  in  the  response  of  the  Gen- 
eral Court,  made  through  Governor  Endicott,  October 
30,  1664 :  "  The  all-knowing  God  he  knowes  our  great- 
est ambition  is  to  Hue  a  poore  and  quiet  life  in  a  cor- 
ner of  the  world,  without  offence  to  God  or  man. 
Wee  came  not  into  this  wilderness  to  seeke  great 
things  to  ourselves,  and  if  any  come  after  vs  to  seeke 
them  heere,  they  will  be  disappointed."  They  then 
declare  that  to  yield  to  the  demands  of  the  com- 
missioners would  be  simply  to  destroy  their  own  lib- 
erties, expressly  guaranteed  to  them  by  their  King, 
and  dearer  than  their  lives. 

The  commissioners  visited  other  colonies  and  then 
returned  to  Boston,  where  they  announced  that  they 
should  hold  a  court  at  the  house  of  Captain  Thomas 
Breedon  on  Hanover  Street,  at  9  a.m.,  May  24,  1665. 
It  happened  that  a  brother  officer  of  Captain  Bree- 
don, one  Colonel  Cartwright,  who  had  come  over  with 
the  commissioners,  was  then  lying  ill  with  the  gout 
at  this  same  house.  At  eight  in  the  morning  a  mes- 
senger of  the  General  Court  appeared  beneath  the 
window,  blew  an  alarum  on  the  trumpet,  and  pro- 


THE    BRITISH    YOKE 

claimed  that  the  General  Court  protested  against  any 
such  meeting.  He  then  departed  to  make  similar 
proclamation  in  other  parts  of  the  town ;  and  when 
the  royal  commissioners  came  together  they  found 
nobody  with  whom  to  confer  but  the  gouty  and  irate 
Colonel  Cartwright,  enraged  at  the  disturbance  of  his 
morning  slumbers.  So  perished  all  hope  of  coercing 
the  Massachusetts  colony  at  that  time. 

Thus  early  did  the  British  yoke  begin  to  make  it- 
self felt  as  a  grievance.  The  Massachusetts  men  dis- 
creetly allayed  the  effect  of  their  protest  by  sending 
his  Majesty  a  ship-load  of  masts,  the  freight  on  which 
cost  the  colony  £1600.  For  ten  years  the  quarrel 
subsided :  England,  had  trouble  enough  with  her  neigh- 
bors without  meddling  with  the  colonies.  Then  the 
contest  revived,  and  while  the  colonies  were  in  the 
death-struggle  of  Philip's  war,  Edward  Randolph 
came  as  commissioner  with  a  King's  letter  in  1675. 
Two  years  later  the  Massachusetts  colonists  made  for 
the  first  time  the  distinct  assertion  to  the  King,  while 
pledging  their  loyalty,  that  "the  laws  of  England 
were  bounded  within  the  four  seas,  and  did  not  reach 
America,"  giving  as  a  reason  for  this,  "they  [the 
colonists]  not  being  represented  in  Parliament."  Then 
followed  the  long  contest  for  the  charter,  while  Ed- 
ward Randolph,  like  a  sort  of  Mephistopheles,  was 
constantlv  coming  and  going  between  America  and 
England  with  fresh  complaints  and  new  orders,  cross- 
ing the  Atlantic  eight  times  in  nine  years,  and  having 
always,  by  his  own  statement,  "  pressed  the  necessity 
of  a  general  Governor  as  absolutely  necessary  for  the 
honor  and  service  of  the  crown."  All  this  long  series 
of  contests  has  been  minutely  narrated  by  Charles 
Deane  with  a  thoroughness  and  clearness  which  would 

211 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

have  won  him  a  world-wide  reputation  had  they  only 
been  brought  to  bear  upon  the  history  of  some  little 
European  state.  Again  and  again,  in  different  forms, 
the  attempt  was  made  to  take  away  the  charters  of 
the  colonies;  and  the  opposition  was  usually  led,  at 
least  in  New  England,  by  the  clergy.  Increase 
Mather,  in  1683-84,  addressed  a  town-meeting  in 
opposition  to  one  such  demand,  and  openly  coun- 
selled that  they  should  return  Naboth's  answer  when 
Ahab  asked  for  his  vineyard,  that  they  would  not 
give  up  the  inheritance  of  their  fathers. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  all  the  early  charters 
were  defective  in  this,  that  they  did  not  clearly  define 
where  the  line  was  to  be  drawn  between  the  rights  of 
the  local  government  and  of  the  crown.  We  can  see 
now  that  such  definition  would  have  been  impossible ; 
even  the  promise  given  to  Lord  Baltimore  that  Mary- 
land should  have  absolute  self-government  did  not 
avert  all  trouble.  It  is  also  to  be  remembered  that 
there  were  great  legal  difficulties  in  annulling  a  char- 
ter, so  long  as  the  instrument  itself  had  not  been  re- 
claimed by  the  power  that  issued  it.  We  read  with 
surprise  of  a  royal  scheme  thwarted  by  so  simple  a 
process  as  the  hiding  of  the  Connecticut  charter  in  a 
hollow  tree  by  William  Wadsworth;  but  an  almost 
vital  importance  was  attached  in  those  days  to  the 
actual  possession  of  the  instrument.  It  was  consider- 
ed the  most  momentous  of  all  the  Lord  Chancellor's 
duties — indeed,  that  from  which  he  had  his  name 
(cancellarius) — to  literally  cancel  and  obliterate  the 
King's  letters-patent  under  the  great  seal.  Hence, 
although  the  old  charter  of  Massachusetts  was  vacated 
October  23,  1684,  it  has  always  been  doubted  by  law- 
yers whether  this  was  ever  legally  done,  inasmuch  as 

212 


THE    BRITISH    YOKE 

the  old  charter  never  was  cancelled  and  hangs  intact 
in  the  office  of  the  Massachusetts  Secretary  of  State 
to  this  day.  In  1686  came  the  new  governor  for  the 
colonies— not  the  dreaded  Colonel  Kirke,  who  had 
been  fully  expected,  but  the  less  formidable  Sir  Ed- 
mund Andros. 

The  first  foretaste  of  the  provincial  life,  as  distinct 
from  the  merely  colonial,  was  in  the  short-lived  ca- 
reer of  this  ruler.  He  came,  a  brilliant  courtier, 
among  the  plain  Americans;  his  servants  wore  gay 
liveries ;  Lady  Andros  had  the  first  coach  seen  in  Bos- 
ton. He  was  at  different  times  Governor  of  New 
York,  President  of  New  England,  and  Governor  of 
Virginia.  Everywhere  he  was  received  with  aver- 
sion, but  everywhere  this  was  temperepl  by  the  feel- 
ing that  it  might  have  been  worse,  for  it  might  have 
been  Kirke.  Yet  there  was  exceeding  frankness  in 
the  way  the  colonists  met  their  would-be  tyrant. 
When  he  visited  Hartford,  Connecticut,  for  instance, 
he  met  Dr.  Hooker  one  morning,  and  said,  "  I  sup- 
pose all  the  good  people  of  Connecticut  are  fasting 
and  praying  on  my  account."  The  doctor  replied, 
"  Yes,  we  read,  'This  kind  goeth  not  out  but  by  fast- 
ing and  prayer.'"  And  it  required  not  merely  these 
methods,  but  something  more,  to  eject  Sir  Edmund 
at  last  from  the  colonies. 

The  three  years'  sway  of  Sir  Edmund  Andros  ac- 
customed the  minds  of  the  American  colonists  to  a 
new  relation  between  themselves  and  England.  Even 
where  the  old  relation  was  not  changed  in  form  it 
was  changed  in  feeling.  The  colonies  which  had 
seemed  most  secure  in  their  self-government  were 
liable  at  any  moment  to  become  mere  royal  prov- 
inces.    Indeed,  they  were  officially  informed  that  his 

213 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Majesty  had  decided  to  unite  under  one  government 
"all  the  English  territories  in  America,  from  Dela- 
ware Bay  to  Nova  Scotia,"  though  this  was  not 
really  attempted.  Yet  charters  were  taken  away  al- 
most at  random,  colonies  were  divided  or  united 
without  the  consent  of  their  inhabitants,  and  the  vio- 
lation of  the  right  of  local  government  was  every- 
where felt.  But  in  various  ways,  directly  or  indi- 
rectly, the  purposes  of  Andros  were  thwarted.  When 
the  English  revolution  of  1688  came,  his  power  fell 
without  a  blow,  and  he  found  himself  in  the  hands 
of  the  rebellious  men  of  Boston.  The  day  had  passed 
by  when  English  events  could  be  merely  ignored, 
and  so  every  colony  proclaimed  with  joy  the  acces- 
sion of  William  and  Mary.  Such  men  as  Jacob  Leis- 
ler,  in  New  York,  Robert  Treat,  in  Connecticut,  and 
the  venerable  Simon  Bradstreet — then  eighty-seven 
years  old — in  Massachusetts,  were  at  once  recog- 
nized as  the  leaders  of  the  people.  There  was  some 
temporary  disorder,  joined  with  high  hope,  but  the 
colonies  never  really  regained  what  they  had  lost,  and 
henceforth  held,  more  or  less  distinctly,  the  char- 
acter of  provinces,  until  they  took  their  destiny,  long 
after,  into  their  own  hands.  It  needed  almost  a  cen- 
tury to  prepare  them  for  that  event,  not  only  by 
their  increasing  sense  of  grievance,  but  by  learning 
to  stretch  out  their  hands  to  one  another. 

With  the  fall  of  the  colonial  charters  fell  the  New 
England  confederacy  that  had  existed  from  1643. 
There  were  other  plans  of  union :  William  Penn  form- 
ed a  very  elaborate  one  in  1698;  others  labored  after- 
wards in  pamphlets  to  modify  his  plan  or  to  suggest 
their  own.  On  nine  different  occasions,  between 
1684  and  1 75 1,  three  or  more  colonies  met  in  council, 

2T4 


THE    BRITISH    YOKE 

represented  by  their  governors  or  by  their  commis- 
sioners, to  consult  on  internal  affairs,  usually  with 
reference  to  the  Indians;  but  they  apparently  never 
had  a  thought  of  disloyalty,  and  certainly  never  pro- 
claimed independence;  nor  did  their  meetings  for  a 
long  time  suggest  any  alarm  in  the  minds  of  the 
British  ministry.  The  new  jealousies  that  arose  re- 
lated rather  to  commercial  restrictions  than  to  the 
form  of  government. 

It  is  necessary  to  remember  that  even  in  colonial 
days,  while  it  was  of  the  greatest  importance  that 
the  British  law-makers  should  know  all  about  the 
colonies,  there  was  on  their  part  even  a  denser  igno- 
rance as  to  American  affairs  than  that  which  now  im- 
presses the  travelling  American  in  England.  When 
he  is  asked  if  he  came  from  America  by  land,  it  is 
only  a  matter  for  amusement;  but  when,  as  James 
Otis  tells  us — writing  in  1764 — it  was  not  uncom- 
mon for  official  papers  to  come  from  an  English  Sec- 
retary of  State  addressed  to  "the  Governor  of  the 
island  of  New  England,"  it  was  a  more  serious  mat- 
ter. Under  such  circumstances  the  home  govern- 
ment was  liable  at  any  minute  to  be  swept  away 
from  all  just  policy  by  some  angry  tale  told  by  Ran- 
dolph or  Andros.  The  prevalent  British  feeling  tow- 
ards the  colonies  was  one  of  indifference,  broken  only 
by  outbursts  of  anger  and  spasms  of  commercial  self- 
ishness. 

The  event  which  startled  the  British  ministry  from 
this  indifference  was  the  taking  of  Louisburg  in  1745, 
as  described  in  a  previous  chapter.  This  success  may 
have  been,  as  has  been  asserted,  only  a  lucky  acci- 
dent; no  matter,  it  startled  not  only  America  but 
Europe.     That   a  fortress  deemed  impregnable  by 

2I5 


HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

French  engineers  and  amply  garrisoned  by  French 
soldiers  should  have  been  captured  by  a  mob  of 
farmers  and  fishermen — this  gave  subject  for  reflec- 
tion. "Every  one  knows  the  importance  of  Louis- 
burg,"  wrote  James  Otis,  proudly,  "in  the  consulta- 
tions of  Aix-la-Chapelle."  Voltaire,  in  writing  the 
history  of  Louis  the  Fifteenth,  heads  the  chapter  of 
the  calamities  of  France  with  this  event.  He  de- 
clares that  the  mere  undertaking  of  such  an  enter- 
prise showed  of  what  a  community  was  capable  when 
it  united  the  spirit  of  trade  and  of  war.  The  siege 
of  Louisburg,  he  says,  was  not  due  to  the  cabinet  at 
London,  but  solely  to  the  daring  of  the  New  Eng- 
land traders  ("  ce  jut  le  fruit  de  la  kardiesse  des  mar- 
chands  de  la  Nouvelle  Angleterre").  But  while  the 
feeling  inspired  on  the  European  continent  was  one 
of  respect,  that  created  in  England  was  mingled  with 
dread.  Was,  then,  the  child  learning  to  do  without 
the  parent?  And  certainly  the  effect  on  the  minds 
of  the  Americans  looked  like  anything  but  the  devel- 
opment of  humility.  Already  the  colonies,  from 
Massachusetts  to  Virginia,  were  eagerly  planning  the 
conquest  of  Canada,  they  to  furnish  the  whole  land 
force  and  Great  Britain  the  fleet — a  project  which 
failed  through  the  fears  of  the  British  ministry.  The 
Duke  of  Bedford,  then  at  the  head  of  the  naval  ser- 
vice, frankly  objected  to  it  because  of  "the  indepen- 
dence it  might  create  in  these  provinces,  when  they 
shall  see  within  themselves  so  great  an  army  possessed 
by  so  great  a  country  by  right  of  conquest."  And  the 
Swedish  traveller,  Peter  Kalm,  writing  three  years 
later  from  New  York,  put  the  whole  matter  yet  more 
clearly,  thus:  "There  is  reason  for  doubting  whether 
the  King,  if  he  had  the  power,  would  wish  to  drive 

216 


THE    BRITISH    YOKE 

the  French  from  their  possessions  in  Canada.  .  .  .  The 
English  government  has  therefore  reason  to  regard 
the  French  in  North  America  as  the  chief  power  that 
urges  their  colonies  to  submission."  Any  such  im- 
pressions were  naturally  confirmed  when,  in  1748, 
the  indignant  American  colonists  saw  Louisburg  go 
back  to  the  French  under  the  treaty  of  Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle. 

The  trouble  was  that  the  British  government  wish- 
ed the  colonies  to  unite  sufficiently  to  check  the  French 
designs,  but  not  enough  to  assert  their  own  power. 
Thus  the  ministry  positively  encouraged  the  conven- 
tion of  delegates  from  the  New  England  colonies  and 
from  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  and  Maryland,  which 
met  at  Albany  on  June  19,  1754.  It  was  in  this  con- 
vention that  Franklin  began  a  course  of  national  in- 
fluence which  was  long  continued,  and  brought  for- 
ward his  famous  representation  of  the  snake  dismem- 
bered, with  the  motto  ''Unite  or  Die."  He  showed 
also  his  great  organizing  power  by  carrying  through 
the  convention  a  plan  for  a  council  of  forty-eight 
members  distributed  among  the  different  colonies, 
and  having  for  its  head  a  royal  presiding  officer  with 
veto  power.  All  the  delegates,  except  those  from 
Connecticut,  sustained  the  plan;  it  was  only  when  it 
went  to  the  several  colonies  and  the  British  ministry 
that  it  failed.  Its  ill  success  in  these  two  directions 
came  from  diametrically  opposite  reasons:  the  col- 
onies thought  that  it  gave  them  too  little  power,  and 
the  King's  Council  found  in  it  just  the  reverse  fault. 
It  failed,  but  its  failure  left  on  the  public  mind  an 
increased  sense  of  divergence  between  England  and 
America.  Merely  to  have  conceived  such  a  plan  was 
a  great  step  towards  the  American  Union  that  came 

217 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

afterwards;  but  still  there  was  no  conscious  shrink- 
ing from  the  British  yoke. 

The  ten  colonies  which  had  a  separate  existence  in 
1700  had  half  a  century  later  grown  to  thirteen. 
Delaware,  after  having  been  merged  in  Pennsylvania, 
was  again  separated  from  it  in  1 703 ;  North  and  South 
Carolina  were  permanently  divided  in  1729;  Georgia 
was  settled  in  1733.  No  colony  had  a  nobler  foun- 
dation: it  was  planned  by  its  founder  —  a  British 
general  and  a  member  of  Parliament — expressly  as  a 
refuge  for  poor  debtors  and  other  unfortunates;  the 
colony  was  named  Georgia  in  honor  of  the  King,  but 
it  was  given  to  the  proprietors  "in  trust  for  the  poor," 
and  its  seal  had  a  family  of  silk-worms,  with  the 
motto  "Not  for  yourselves"  (Sic  vos  non  vobis). 
Oglethorpe  always  kept  friendship  with  the  Indians; 
he  refused  to  admit  either  slavery  or  ardent  spirits 
into  the  colony.  But  his  successors  did  not  adhere 
to  his  principles,  and  the  colony  was  small  and  weak 
up  to  the  time  of  the  coming  separation  from  England. 
Yet  the  growth  of  the  colonies  as  a  whole  was  strong 
and  steady.  Bancroft  estimates  their  numbers  in 
1754  at  1,185,000  whites  and  260,500  colored,  mak- 
ing in  all  nearly  a  million  and  a  half.  Counting  the 
whites  only,  Massachusetts  took  the  lead  in  popula- 
tion; counting  both  races,  Virginia.  "Some  few 
towns  excepted,"  wrote  Dickinson  soon  after,  "we 
are  all  tillers  of  the  earth,  from  Nova  Scotia  to  West 
Florida.  We  are  a  people  of  cultivators,  scattered 
over  an  immense  territory,  communicating  with  each 
other  by  means  of  good  roads  and  navigable  rivers, 
united  by  the  silken  bands  of  mild  government,  all 
respecting  the  laws  without  dreading  their  power, 
because  they  are  equitable." 

2T8 


THE    BRITISH    YOKE 

But  if  the  colonies  had  all  been  composed  of  peace- 
ful agriculturists,  the  British  yoke  would  have  been 
easy.     It  was  on  the  commercial  settlements  that  the 
exactions  of  the  home  government  bore  most  severely, 
and  hence  it  was  that  the  eastern  colonies,  which  had 
suffered  most  in  the  Indian  wars,  were  again  to  en- 
dure most  oppression.     An  English  political  econ- 
omist of  1690,  in  a  tract  included  in  the  Harleian 
Miscellany,  pointed  out  that  there  were  two  classes 
of  colonies  in  America;  that  England  need  have  no 
jealousy  of  those  which  raised  only  sugar  and  tobacco 
and  thus  gave  her  a  market ;  but  she  must  keep  anx- 
ious watch  on  those  which  competed  with  England 
in  fishing  and  trade,  and  "threatened  in  time  a  total 
independence  therefrom."     "  When  America  shall  be 
so  well  peopled,  civilized,  and  divided  into  kingdoms," 
wrote   Sir   Thomas   Browne   about   the   same   time, 
"they  are  like  to  have  so  little  regard  of  their  origi- 
nals as  to  acknowledge  no  subjection  unto  them." 
All  the  long  series  of  arbitrary  measures  which  fol- 
lowed were  but  the  effort  of  the  British  government 
to  avert  this  danger.     The  conquest  of  Canada,  by 
making  the  colonies  more  important,  only  disposed 
the   ministry   to   enforce   obnoxious   laws   that   had 
hitherto  been  dead  letters. 

Such  laws  were  the  Navigation  Acts,  and  the 
"Sugar  Act,"  and  what  were  known  generally  as  the 
"Acts  of  Trade,"  all  aimed  at  the  merchants  of  New 
England  and  New  York.  Out  of  this  grew  the  Writs 
of  Assistance,  which  gave  authority  to  search  any 
house  for  merchandise  liable  to  duty,  and  which  were 
resisted  in  a  celebrated  argument  by  James  Otis  in 
1 76 1.  Then  came  the  Declaratory  Resolves  of  1764, 
which    were    the    precursors     of    the     Stamp    Act. 

219 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

The  discussion  occasioned  by  these  measures  was 
more  important  than  any  other  immediate  effect 
they  produced ;  they  afforded  an  academy  of  political 
education  for  the  people.  Those  who  had  called 
themselves  Whigs  gradually  took  the  name  of  Pa- 
triots, and  from  Patriots  they  became  "Sons  of 
Liberty."  Every  successive  measure  struck  at  once 
the  double  chord  of  patriotism  and  pocket,  so  that 
"Liberty  and  property"  became  the  common  cry. 
The  colonists  took  the  position,  which  is  found  every- 
where in  Otis's  Rights  of  the  Colonies,  that  their  claims 
were  not  dependent  alone  on  the  validity  of  their 
charters,  but  that  their  rights  as  British  subjects 
were  quite  sufficient  to  protect  them. 

From  this  time  forth  the  antagonism  increased, 
and  it  so  roused  and  united  the  people  that  the  stu- 
dent wonders  how  it  happened  that  the  actual  out- 
break was  delayed  so  long.  It  is  quite  remarkable, 
in  view  of  the  recognized  differences  among  the  col- 
onies, that  there  should  have  been  such  unanimity  in 
tone.  There  was  hardly  anything  to  choose,  in  point 
of  weight  and  dignity,  between  the  protests  drawn 
up  by  Oxenbridge  Thacher  in  Massachusetts,  by 
Stephen  Hopkins  in  Rhode  Island,  by  the  brothers 
Livingston  in  New  York,  and  by  Lee  and  Wythe  in 
Virginia.  The  southern  colonies,  which  suffered 
least  from  the  exactions  of  the  home  government, 
made  common  cause  with  those  which  suffered  most. 
All  the  colonies  claimed,  in  the  words  of  the  Virginia 
Assembly,  "their  ancient  and  indestructible  right  of 
being  governed  by  such  laws  respecting  their  internal 
polity  and  taxation  as  were  derived  from  their  own 
consent,  with  the  approbation  of  their  sovereign  or 
his  substitute." 

220 


THE    BRITISH    YOKE 

The  blow  fell  in  1765,  with  the  Stamp  Act — an 
act  which  would  not  have  been  unjust  or  unreason- 
able in  England,  and  was  only  held  so  in  America 
because  it  involved  the  principle  of  taxing  where 
there  was  no  representation.  For  a  moment  the 
colonies  seemed  stunned;  then  the  bold  protest  of 
Patrick  Henry  in  Virginia  was  taken  up  by  James 
Otis  in  Massachusetts.  He  it  was  who  proposed  an 
American  Congress  in  1765,  and  though  only  nine 
out  of  the  thirteen  colonies  sent  delegates,  this 
brought  them  nearer  than  ever  before.  It  drew  up 
its  Declaration  of  Rights.  Then  followed,  in  col- 
ony after  colony,  mobs  and  burnings  in  effigy;  no- 
body dared  to  act  as  stamp  officer.  When  the  news 
reached  England,  the  Earl  of  Chatham  said:  "The 
gentleman  tells  us  that  America  is  obstinate,  America 
is  almost  in  open  rebellion.  I  rejoice  that  America 
has  resisted."  Then  came  the  riot  between  people 
and  soldiers,  called  the  "  Boston  Massacre,"  in  1770, 
and  the  burning  by  the  people  of  the  armed  British 
schooner  Gas  pee,  in  Narragansett  Bay,  in  1772.  In 
1773  the  tea  was  thrown  into  the  harbor  at  Boston; 
at  Annapolis  it  was  burned;  at  Charleston  it  was 
stored  and  left  to  spoil;  at  New  York  and  Philadel- 
phia it  was  returned.  The  next  year  came  the  Bos- 
ton Port  Bill,  received  with  public  mourning  in  the 
other  colonies  and  with  grim  endurance  by  the  Bos- 
tonians.  A  thriving  commercial  town  suddenly  found 
itself  unable  to  receive  any  vessel  whose  cargo  had 
not  been  first  landed  at  a  port  then  thirty  miles  away 
by  road — Marblehead — or  to  discharge  any  except 
through  a  custom-house  at  Plymouth,  then  forty 
miles  by  road  in  the  other  direction.  All  the  indus- 
tries of  the  place  were  stopped,  and  the  price  of  fuel 

221 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

and  provisions  rose  one-third ;  for  every  stick  of  wood 
and  every  barrel  of  molasses  had  to  be  landed  first 
on  the  wharf  at  Marblehead  and  then  laboriously  re- 
shipped  to  Boston,  or  be  sent  on  the  long  road  by 
land.  But  as  tyranny  usually  reacts  upon  itself,  the 
voluntary  contributions  which  came  from  all  parts 
of  the  colonies  to  the  suffering  town  did  more  to  ce- 
ment a  common  feeling  than  years  of  prosperity  could 
have  done. 

In  this  chafed  and  oppressed  position  the  people 
of  Boston  awaited  events  and  the  country  looked  on. 
Meanwhile  the  first  Continental  Congress  had  met  at 
Philadelphia,  September  5,  1774,  with  a  sole  view  to 
procuring  a  redress  of  grievances,  the  people  of  every 
colony  pledging  themselves  in  one  form  or  another 
to  abide  by  the  decision  of  this  body.  In  July  of  that 
year,  long  before  the  thought  of  separation  took  shape 
even  in  the  minds  of  the  leaders,  Ezra  Stiles  wrote 
this  prophecy:  "If  oppression  proceeds,  despotism 
may  originate  an  American  Magna  Charta  and  Bill 
of  Rights,  supported  by  such  intrepid  and  persever- 
ing importunity  as  even  sovereignty  may  hereafter 
judge  it  not  wise  to  withstand.  There  will  be  a 
Runnymede  in  America."  Such  was  the  change  from 
1640  to  1774;  the  mother-country  which  to  Hooke 
signified  paradise,  to  Stiles  signified  oppression;  the 
one  clergyman  wrote  to  deprecate  war  in  England, 
the  other  almost  invoked  it  in  America. 

The  Congress  met,  every  colony  but  little  Georgia 
being  soon  represented.  Its  meeting  signified  that 
the  colonies  were  at  last  united.  In  Patrick  Henry's 
great  opening  speech  he  said:  "  British  oppression  has 
effaced  the  boundaries  of  the  several  colonies;  the 
distinctions  between  Virginians,  Pennsylvanians,  New- 


THE    BRITISH    YOKE 

Yorkers,  and  New  -  Englanders  are  no  more.  I  am 
not  a  Virginian;  I  am  an  American." 

There  is,  I  think,  an  undue  tendency  in  these  days 
to  exaggerate  the  differences  between  the  colonies; 
and  in  bringing  them  to  the  eve  of  a  great  struggle 
it  is  needful  to  consider  how  far  they  were  different 
and  how  far  they  were  one.  In  fact,  the  points  of 
resemblance  among  the  different  colonies  far  exceed- 
ed the  points  of  difference.  They  were  mainly  of  the 
same  English  race;  they  were  mainly  Puritans  in 
religion;  they  bore  with  them  the  local  institutions 
and  traditions;  all  held  slaves,  though  in  varying  pro- 
portions. On  the  other  hand,  they  were  subject  to 
certain  variations  of  climate,  pursuits,  and  local  in- 
stitutions; but,  after  all,  these  were  secondary;  the 
resemblances  were  more  important. 

The  style  of  architecture  prevailing  throughout  the 
colonies  in  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century 
gives  proof  enough  that  the  mode  of  living  among 
the  higher  classes  at  that  period  must  everywhere 
have  been  much  the  same.  The  same  great  square 
edifices,  the  same  stacks  of  chimneys,  the  same  tiles, 
the  same  mahogany  stairways,  and  the  same  carving 
are  still  to  be  seen  in  the  old  dwellings  of  Portsmouth, 
Newburyport,  Salem,  Boston,  Newport,  Philadelphia, 
Annapolis,  and  Norfolk.  When  Washington  came 
from  Mount  Vernon  to  Cambridge  as  commander  of 
the  American  army,  he  occupied  as  headquarters  a 
house  resembling  in  many  respects  his  own;  and  this 
was  one  of  a  line  of  similar  houses,  afterwards  known 
as  "Tory  Row,"  and  extending  from  Harvard  College 
to  Mount  Auburn.  These  were  but  the  types  of  the 
whole  series  of  colonial  or  rather  provincial  houses, 
north  and   south.      Sometimes   they  were  built  of 

223 


HISTORY    OF    THE.  UNITED    STATES 

wood,  the  oaken  frames  being  brought  from  England, 
sometimes  of  brick  brought  from  Scotland,  some- 
times of  stone.  The  chief  difference  between  the 
northern  and  southern  houses  was  that  the  cham- 
bers, being  less  important  in  a  warm  country,  were 
less  ample  and  comfortable  in  the  southern  houses, 
and  the  windows  were  smaller,  while  for  the  same 
reason  there  was  much  more  lavishness  in  the  way 
of  piazzas.  Every  one  accustomed  to  the  old  north- 
ern houses  is  surprised  at  the  inadequate  chambers 
of  Mount  Vernon,  and  it  appears  from  the  diary  of 
Mr.  Frost,  a  New  England  traveller  in  1797,  that  he 
was  then  so  struck  with  the  smallness  of  the  win- 
dows as  to  have  made  a  note  of  it.  The  stairway 
at  Arlington  is  singularly  disproportioned  to  the  ex- 
ternal dignity  of  the  house,  and  there  is  a  tradition 
that  at  the  funeral  of  Jefferson  the  stairway  of  his 
house  at  Monticello  proved  too  narrow  for  the  coffin, 
so  that  it  had  to  be  lowered  from  the  window.  All 
this  was  the  result  of  the  out-door  climate,  and  apart 
from  these  trivial  variations  the  life  north  and  south 
was  much  the  same — stately  and  ceremonious  in  the 
higher  classes,  with  social  distinctions  much  more 
thoroughly  marked  than  we  are  now  accustomed  to 
remember. 

We  know  by  the  private  memoirs  of  the  provincial 
period — for  instance,  from  the  charming  recollections 
of  Mrs.  Quincy — that  the  costumes  and  manners  of 
the  upper  classes  were  everywhere  modelled  on  the 
English  style  of  the  period.  Even  after  the  war  of 
independence,  when  the  wealthier  inhabitants  of  Bos- 
ton had  largely  gone  into  exile  at  Halifax,  the  church- 
es were  still  filled  on  important  occasions  with  gentle- 
men wearing  wigs,  cocked  hats,  and  scarlet  cloaks ;  and 

224 


THE    BRITISH    YOKE 

before  the  Revolution  the  display  must  have  been  far 
greater.  In  Maryland,  at  a  somewhat  earlier  period, 
we  find  an  advertisement  in  the  Maryland  Gazette  of 
a  servant  who  offers  himself  "  to  wait  on  table,  curry 
horses,  clean  knives,  boots,  and  shoes,  lay  a  table, 
shave,  and  dress  wigs,  carry  a  lantern,  and  talk 
French;  is  as  honest  as  the  times  will  admit,  and  as 
sober  as  can  be."  From  this  standard  of  a  servant's 
accomplishments  we  can  easily  infer  the  mode  of  life 
among  the  masters. 

A  striking  illustration  of  these  social  demarcations 
is  to  be  found  in  the  general  catalogues,  now  called 
"triennial"  or  "quinquennial,"  of  our  older  colleges. 
Down  to  the  year  1767  at  Yale,  and  1772  at  Harvard, 
the  students  of  each  class  will  be  found  arranged  in 
an  order  which  is  not  alphabetical,  as  at  the  present 
day,  but  seems  arbitrary.  Not  at  all;  they  were  ar- 
ranged according  to  the  social  positions  of  their  par- 
ents ;  and  we  know  from  the  recollections  of  the  vener- 
able Paine  Wingate  that  the  first  thing  done  by  the 
college  authorities  on  the  admission  of  a  new  class 
was  to  ascertain  by  careful  inquiry  these  facts.  Ac- 
cording to  the  result  of  the  inquiry,  the  young  stu- 
dents were  "placed"  in  the  dining-hall  and  the  recita- 
tion-room, and  upon  this  was  also  based  the  choice  of 
college  rooms.  Had  they  always  retained  this  rela- 
tive standing  it  would  have  been  less  galling,  but 
while  the  most  distinguished  student  could  not  rise 
in  the  list,  the  reprobates  could  fall;  and  the  best 
scholar  in  the  class  might  find  himself  not  merely  in 
a  low  position  through  his  parentage,  but  flanked  on 
each  side  by  scions  of  more  famed  families  who  had 
been  degraded  by  their  own  folly  or  vice.  There  could 
not  be  a  more  conclusive  proof  that  American  pro- 
is  225 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

vincial  society,  even  in  the  eastern  colonies,  was 
founded,  before  the  final  separation  from  England, 
on  an  essentially  aristocratic  basis. 

In  the  same  connection  it  must  be  remembered  that 
in  the  eighteenth  century  slavery  gave  the  tone  of 
manners  through  all  the  colonies.  No  matter  how 
small  the  proportion  of  slaves,  experience  shows  that 
it  affected  the  whole  habit  of  society.  In  Massa- 
chusetts, in  1775,  there  was  probably  a  population  of 
some  350,000,  of  whom  but  5000  were  slaves.  It 
was  enough;  the  effect  followed.  It  was  in  Cam- 
bridge, Massachusetts,  not  in  Virginia,  that  Long- 
fellow found  his  tradition  of  the  lady  who  was  buried 
by  her  own  order  with  slave  attendants : 

"At  her  feet  and  at  her  head 
Lies  a  slave  to  attend  the  dead; 
But  their  dust  is  as  white  as  hers." 

It  is  curious  to  compare  the  command  of  this  dying 
woman  of  the  Vassall  race — whether  it  was  an  act  of 
arrogance  or  of  humility — with  the  self-humiliation 
of  a  Virginia  dame  of  the  same  period  who  directed 
the  burial  of  her  body  beneath  that  portion  of  the 
church  occupied  by  the  poor,  since  she  had  despised 
them  in  life,  and  wished  them  to  trample  upon  her 
when  dead. 

Let  us  consider,  by  way  of  further  illustration,  the 
way  of  living  on  the  Narragansett  shore  of  Rhode 
Island,  and  see  how  closely  it  resembled  that  of  Vir- 
ginia. The  late  venerable  Isaac  Peace  Hazard,  of  New- 
port, Rhode  Island,  told  me  that  his  great-grand- 
father, Robert  Hazard,  of  Narragansett,  used  in  later 
life,  when  he  had  given  away  many  of  his  farms  to 
his  children,   to  congratulate  himself  on  the  small 

226 


THE    BRITISH    YOKE 

limits  to  which  he  had  reduced  his  household,  having 
only  seventy  in  parlor  and  kitchen.  He  occupied  at 
one  time  nearly  twelve  thousand  acres  of  land,  and 
kept  some  four  thousand  sheep,  from  whose  fleece 
his  large  household  was  almost  wholly  clothed.  He 
had  in  his  dairy  twelve  negro  women,  all  slaves,  and 
each  having  a  young  girl  to  assist  her ;  each  dairy-maid 
had  the  care  of  twelve  cows,  and  they  were  expected 
to  make  from  one  to  two  dozen  cheeses  every  day. 
This  was  the  agricultural  and  domestic  side;  the  so- 
cial life  consisted  of  one  long  series  of  gay  entertain- 
ments, visiting  from  house  to  house,  fox-hunting  and 
horse-racing  with  the  then  famous  breed  of  Narra- 
gansett  pacers.  Mr.  Hazard  had  known  old  men 
who  in  their  youth  had  gone  to  Virginia  to  ride  their 
own  horses  at  races,  and  kept  open  house  for  the  Vir- 
ginia riders  in  return.  To  illustrate  how  thoroughly 
the  habits  of  slavery  were  infused  into  the  daily  life, 
he  told  me  that  another  of  these  Narragansett  mag- 
nates, his  great-uncle,  Rowland  Robinson,  said,  im- 
pulsively, one  day:  "I  have  not  servants  enough;  go 
fetch  me  some  from  Guinea."  Upon  this  the  mas- 
ter of  a  small  packet  of  twenty  tons,  belonging  to 
Mr.  Robinson,  fitted  her  out  at  once,  set  sail  for 
Guinea,  and  brought  home  eighteen  slaves,  one  of 
whom  was  a  king's  son.  His  employer  burst  into 
tears  on  their  arrival,  his  order  not  having  been  seri- 
ously given.  But  all  this  was  not  in  Maryland  or 
Virginia;  it  was  in  Rhode  Island,  and  on  a  part  of 
Rhode  Island  so  much  a  place  of  resort  for  the  leading 
Boston  families  that  a  portion  of  it  is  called  Boston 
Neck  to  this  day. 

These  descriptions  could  be  paralleled,  though  not 
fully,  in  all  the  northern  colonies.     The  description 

227 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

of  the  Schuyler  family,  and  of  their  way  of  living  at 
Albany,  as  given  by  Mrs.  Grant,  of  Laggan,  about 
1750,  is  quite  on  a  par  with  these  early  scenes  at 
Narragansett.  In  Connecticut  it  is  recorded  of  John 
Peters,  father  of  the  early  and  malicious  historian  of 
that  name,  that  he  "  aped  the  style  of  a  British  noble- 
man, built  his  house  in  a  forest,  kept  his  coach,  and 
looked  with  some  degree  of  scorn  upon  republicans." 
The  stone  house  of  the  Lee  family  at  Marblehead  cost 
£10,000;  the  house  of  Godfrey  Malbone  at  Newport 
cost  £20,000;  the  Wentworth  house  at  Portsmouth 
had  fifty-two  rooms.  Through  all  the  colonies  these 
evidences  of  a  stately  way  of  living  were  to  be  found. 
These  facts  are  unquestionable,  and  would  not  so 
fully  have  passed  out  of  sight  but  for  another  fact 
never  yet  fully  explained.  When  the  war  of  inde- 
pendence came  it  made  no  social  change  in  the  south- 
ern provinces,  but  it  made  a  social  revolution  in  the 
northern  provinces.  For  some  reason,  perhaps  only 
for  the  greater  nearness  to  Nova  Scotia,  the  gentry 
of  New  England  took  the  loyal  side  and  fled,  while  the 
gentry  of  Virginia  fell  in  with  the  new  movement,  be- 
coming its  leaders.  From  my  window,  as  I  write,  I 
have  glimpses  of  some  of  the  large  houses  of  "Tory 
Row,"  in  Cambridge,  where,  according  to  the  contem- 
porary description  of  the  Baroness  Riedesel,  seven  kin- 
dred families  lived  in  the  greatest  luxury  until  the  Rev- 
olution, all  probably  slave-holders,  like  the  Vassalls, 
and  some  of  them  owning  plantations  in  Jamaica.  All 
fled,  most  of  their  estates  were  confiscated,  and  the 
war  transferred  the  leadership  of  the  New  England 
colonies,  as  Professor  Sumner  has  well  shown  in  his 
Life  of  Jackson,  to  a  new  race  of  young  lawyers. 
Hence  all  the  ante  -  Revolutionary  life  disappeared 

228 


FIRST    VIRGINIA    ASSEMBLY,  .GOVERNOR    YEARDLEY    PRESIDING 


THE    BRITISH    YOKE 

and  was  soon  forgotten;  slavery  disappeared  also, 
while  the  self -same  social  order  still  subsisted  in  Vir- 
ginia, though  constantly  decaying,  until  a  later  war 
brought  that  also  to  an  end. 

There  was  thus  less  of  social  difference  among  the 
colonies  than  is  often  assumed,  but  the  difference  in 
municipal  institutions  was  considerable.  Every  col- 
ony, so  far  as  it  was  left  free  to  do  it,  recognized  the 
principle  of  popular  government,  limiting  the  suf- 
frage by  age,  sex,  race,  or  property,  but  recognizing 
the  control  of  a  majority  of  qualified  electors  as  bind- 
ing. As  a  rule,  this  gave  a  political  status  to  the 
laboring  class  in  the  northern  colonies,  but  not  in 
those  where  slavery  prevailed  and  the  laboring  class 
was  of  a  different  race.  We  naturally  do  not  obtain 
from  the  books  of  the  period  so  clear  a  picture  of  the 
lower  order  of  inhabitants  as  of  the  higher;  perhaps 
the  liveliest  is  to  be  found  in  the  description  of  Gen- 
eral Riedesel,  where  he  represents  the  yeomen  of  New 
England  as  being  thickset,  tolerably  tall,  wearing 
blue  frocks  girt  by  a  strap,  and  having  their  heads 
surmounted  by  yellow  wigs,  ''with  the  honorable 
visage  of  a  magistrate  beneath"  ;  as  being,  moreover, 
rarely  able  to  write ;  inquisitive,  curious,  and  zealous 
to  madness  for  liberty.  These  were  the  people — as 
seen,  be  it  remembered,  through  the  vexed  eyes  of  a 
defeated  prisoner — who  made  up  the  citizenship  of 
the  northern  colonies. 

It  is  certain  that  the  general  model  for  the  colonial 
governments,  and  even  for  our  present  State  govern- 
ments, dates  back  to  the  organization  of  the  Virginia 
House  of  Burgesses  in  1619;  and  all  the  colonies  fol- 
lowed the  same  principle,  with  some  important  modi- 
fications.    But  when  it  came  to  the  government  of 

229 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

small  local  communities  there  was  a  great  variation. 
The  present  system  of  New  England  town  govern- 
ment had  its  beginning,  according  to  Professor  Joel 
Parker,  in  the  action  of  the  inhabitants  of  Charles- 
town,  Massachusetts,  when  they  adopted,  on  Feb- 
ruary 10,  1634-35,  an  order,  which  still  stands  on 
the  record-book,  ''for  the  governm't  of  the  Towne 
by  Selectmen,"  thus  giving  to  eleven  persons,  "wth 
the  advice  of  Pastor  and  teacher  desired  in  any  case 
of  conscience,' '  the  authority  to  manage  their  local 
affairs  for  one  year.  Since  Professor  Parker  wrote, 
however,  the  researches  of  the  Boston  Record  Com- 
mission have  brought  to  light  a  similar  grant  of  power 
by  the  planters  of  Dorchester  (October  8,  1633),  au- 
thorizing twelve  men  "selected  of  the  company"  to 
have  charge  of  its  affairs.  This  form  of  self-govern- 
ment, which  could  be  perfectly  combined  with  the 
existence  of  slavery  on  a  small  scale,  was  inconsistent 
with  a  system  of  great  plantations  like  those  in  the 
southern  colonies ;  and  it  was  this  fact  more  than  any- 
thing else  which  developed  such  difference  in  char- 
acter as  really  existed.  The  other  fact  that  labor  was 
held  in  more  respect  in  the  northern  colonies  than  in 
the  southern  had  doubtless  something  to  do  with  it; 
but,  after  all,  there  was  then  less  philosophizing  on 
that  subject  than  now,  and  the  main  influence  was  the 
town-meeting.  When  John  Adams  was  called  upon 
by  Major  Langbourne  to  explain  the  difference  of 
character  between  Virginia  and  New  England,  Mr. 
Adams  offered  to  give  him  a  receipt  for  creating  a 
New  England  in  Virginia.  It  consisted  of  four  points : 
"  town  -  meetings,  training  -  days,  town  schools,  and 
ministers."  Each  colony  really  based  its  local  insti- 
tutions, in  some  form,  on  English  traditions;  but  the 

230 


THE    BRITISH    YOKE 

system  of  town  government,  as  it  prevailed  in  the 
eastern  colonies,  has  struck  deepest  root,  and  has 
largely  influenced  the  new  civilization  of  the  West. 
Thus,  with  varied  preparation,  but  with  a  common 
need  and  an  increasing  unity,  the  several  colonies  ap- 
proached the  19th  of  April  1775,  when  the  shot  was 
fired  that  was  ''heard  round  the  world." 


X 

THE    DAWNING    OF    INDEPENDENCE 

WHEN  France,  in  1763,  surrendered  Canada  to 
England,  it  suddenly  opened  men's  eyes  to  a 
very  astonishing  fact.  They  discovered  that  British 
America  had  at  once  become  a  country  so  large  as  to 
make  England  seem  ridiculously  small.  Even  the 
cool-headed  Dr.  Franklin,  writing  that  same  year  to 
Mary  Stevenson  in  London,  spoke  of  England  as 
"that  petty  island  which,  compared  to  America,  is 
but  a  stepping-stone  in  a  brook,  scarce  enough  of  it 
above  water  to  keep  one's  shoes  dry."  The  far-seeing 
French  statesmen  of  the  period  looked  at  the  matter 
in  the  same  way.  Choiseul,  the  prime-minister  who 
ceded  Canada,  claimed  afterwards  that  he  had  done 
it  in  order  to  destroy  the  British  nation  by  creating 
for  it  a  rival.  This  boast  was  not  made  till  ten  years 
later,  and  may  very  likely  have  been  an  after-thought, 
but  it  was  destined  to  be  confirmed  by  the  facts. 

We  have  now  to  deal  with  the  outbreak  of  a  contest 
which  was,  according  to  the  greatest  of  the  English 
statesmen  of  the  period,  "a  most  accursed,  wicked, 
barbarous,  cruel,  unnatural,  unjust,  and  diabolical 
war."  No  American  writer  ever  employed  to  de- 
scribe it  a  combination  of  adjectives  so  vigorous  as 
those  here  brought  together  by  the  elder  Pitt,  after- 
wards Lord  Chatham.     The  rights  for  which  Ameri- 

232 


THE    DAWNING    OF    INDEPENDENCE 

cans  fought  seemed  to  them  to  be  the  common  rights 
of  Englishmen,  and  many  Englishmen  thought  the 
same.  On  the  other  hand,  we  are  now  able  to  do 
justice  to  the  position  of  those  American  loyalists  who 
honestly  believed  that  the  attempt  at  independence 
was  a  mad  one,  and  who  sacrificed  all  they  had  rath- 
er than  rebel  against  their  King.  "  The  annals  of  the 
world,"  wrote  "  Massachusettensis,"  the  ablest  Tory 
pamphleteer  in  America,  "have  not  been  deformed 
with  a  single  instance  of  so  unnatural,  so  causeless,  so 
wanton,  so  wicked  a  rebellion."  When  we  compare 
this  string  of  epithets  employed  upon  the  one  side 
with  those  of  Pitt  upon  the  other,  we  see  that  the 
war  at  the  outset  was  not  so  much  a  contest  of  nations 
as  of  political  principles.  Some  of  the  ablest  men  in 
England  defended  the  American  cause;  some  of  the 
ablest  in  the  colonies  took  the  loyal  side. 

Boston  in  the  winter  of  1774-75  was  a  town  of 
some  17,000  inhabitants,  garrisoned  by  some  3000 
British  troops.  It  was  the  only  place  in  the  Massa- 
chusetts colony  where  the  royal  governor  exercised 
any  real  authority  and  where  the  laws  of  Parliament 
had  any  force.  The  result  was  that  its  life  was  par- 
alyzed, its  people  gloomy,  and  its  commerce  dead. 
The  other  colonies  were  still  hoping  to  obtain  their 
rights  by  policy  or  by  legislation,  by  refusing  to  im- 
port or  to  consume,  and  they  watched  with  constant 
solicitude  for  some  riotous  demonstration  in  Boston. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  popular  leaders  in  that  town 
were  taking  the  greatest  pains  that  there  should  be 
no  outbreak.  There  was  risk  of  one  whenever  soldiers 
were  sent  on  any  expedition  into  the  country.  One 
might  have  taken  place  at  Marshfield  in  January ;  one 
almost  happened  at  Salem  in  February;  yet  still  it 

233 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

was  postponed.  No  publicity  was  given  to  the  pa- 
triotic military  organizations  in  Boston;  as  little  as 
possible  was  said  about  the  arms  and  stores  that 
were  gathered  in  the  country.  Not  a  life  had  been 
lost  in  any  popular  excitement  since  the  Boston  Mas- 
sacre in  1770.  The  responsibility  of  the  first  shot, 
the  people  were  determined,  must  rest  upon  the  royal 
troops.  So  far  was  this  carried  that  it  was  honestly 
attributed  by  the  British  soldiers  to  cowardice  alone. 
An  officer,  quoted  by  Frothingham,  wrote  home  in 
November,  1774:  "As  to  what  you  hear  of  their  tak- 
ing arms  to  resist  the  force  of  England,  it  is  mere 
bullying,  and  will  go  no  farther  than  words;  when- 
ever it  comes  to  blows,  he  that  can  run  the  fastest 
will  think  himself  best  off ;  believe  me,  any  two  regi- 
ments here  ought  to  be  decimated  if  they  did  not 
beat  in  the  field  the  whole  force  of  the  Massachusetts 
province ;  for  though  they  are  numerous,  they  are  but 
a  mere  mob,  without  order  or  discipline,  and  very 
awkward  at  handling  their  arms." 

But  whatever  may  have  been  the  hope  of  carrying 
their  point  without  fighting,  the  provincial  authori- 
ties were  steadily  collecting  provisions,  arms,  and 
ammunition.  Unhappily  these  essentials  were  hard 
to  obtain.  On  April  19.  1775,  the  committees  of 
safety  could  only  count  up  twelve  field -pieces  in 
Massachusetts;  and  there  had  been  collected  in  that 
colony,  21,549  fire-arms,  17,441  pounds  of  powder, 
22,191  pounds  of  ball,  144,699  flints,  10,108  bayonets, 
11,979  pouches,  15,000  canteens.  There  were  also 
17,000  pounds  of  salt  fish,  35,000  pounds  of  rice,  with 
large  quantities  of  beef  and  pork.  Viewed  as  an  evi- 
dence of  the  forethought  of  the  colonists,  these  sta- 
tistics are  remarkable ;  but  there  was  something  heroic 

234 


THE    DAWNING    OF    INDEPENDENCE 

and  indeed  almost  pathetic  in  the  project  of  going  to 
war  with  the  British  government  on  the  strength  of 
twelve  field-pieces  and  seventeen  thousand  pounds 
of  salt  fish. 

Yet  when,  on  the  night  of  the  18th  of  April,  1775, 
Paul  Revere  rode  beneath  the  bright  moonlight 
through  Lexington  to  Concord,  with  Dawes  and 
Prescott  for  comrades,  he  was  carrying  the  signal  for 
the  independence  of  a  nation.  He  had  seen  across 
the  Charles  River  the  two  lights  from  the  church- 
steeple  in  Boston  which  were  to  show  that  a  British 
force  was  going  out  to  seize  the  patriotic  supplies 
at  Concord;  he  had  warned  Hancock  and  Adams  at 
Rev.  Jonas  Clark's  parsonage  in  Lexington,  and  had 
rejected  Sergeant  Monroe's  caution  against  unneces- 
sary noise,  with  the  rejoinder,  "You'll  have  noise 
enough  here  before  long — the  regulars  are  coming 
out."  As  he  galloped  on  his  way  the  regulars  were 
advancing  with  steady  step  behind  him,  soon  warned 
of  their  own  danger  by  alarm-bells  and  signal-guns. 
When  Revere  was  captured  by  some  British  officers 
who  happened  to  be  near  Concord,  Colonel  Smith, 
the  commander  of  the  expedition,  had  already  halt- 
ed, ordered  Pitcairn  forward,  and  sent  back  prudently 
for  reinforcements.  It  was  a  night  of  terror  to  all 
the  neighboring  Middlesex  towns,  for  no  one  knew 
what  excesses  the  angry  British  troops  might  com- 
mit on  their  return  march.  The  best  picture  we  have 
of  this  alarm  is  in  the  narrative  of  a  Cambridge  wom- 
an, Mrs.  Hannah  Winthrop,  describing  "the  horrors 
of  that  midnight  cry,"  as  she  calls  it.  The  women  of 
that  town  were  roused  by  the  beat  of  drums  and  ring- 
ing of  bells;  they  hastily  gathered  their  children  to- 
gether and  fled  to  the  outlying  farmhouses;  seventy 

235 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

or  eighty  of  them  were  at  Fresh  Pond,  within  hear- 
ing of  the  guns  at  Menotomy,  now  Arlington.  The 
next  day  their  husbands  bade  them  flee  to  Andover, 
whither  the  college  property  had  been  sent,  and 
thither  they  went,  alternately  walking  and  riding, 
over  fields  where  the  bodies  of  the  slain  lay  unburied. 
Before  5  a.m.  on  April  19,  1775,  the  British  troops 
had  reached  Lexington  Green,  where  thirty -eight 
men,  under  Captain  Parker,  stood  up  before  six  hun- 
dred or  eight  hundred  to  be  shot  at,  their  captain  say- 
ing: "Don't  fire  unless  you  are  fired  on;  but  if  they 
want  a  war,  let  it  begin  here."  It  began  there;  they 
were  fired  upon ;  they  fired  rather  ineffectually  in  re- 
turn, while  seven  were  killed  and  nine  wounded. 
The  rest,  after  retreating,  reformed  and  pursued  the 
British  towards  Concord,  capturing  seven  stragglers 
— the  first  prisoners  taken  in  the  war.  Then  fol- 
lowed the  fight  at  Concord,  where  four  hundred  and 
fifty  Americans,  instead  of  thirty-eight,  were  rallied 
to  meet  the  British.  The  fighting  took  place  between 
two  detachments  at  the  North  Bridge,  where 

"once  the  embattled  farmers  stood, 
And  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world." 

There  the  American  captain,  Isaac  Davis,  was  killed 
at  the  first  shot — he  who  had  said,  when  his  com- 
pany was  placed  at  the  head  of  the  little  column,  "  I 
haven't  a  man  that  is  afraid  to  go."  He  fell,  and 
Major  Buttrick  gave  the  order,  "  Fire!  for  God's  sake, 
fire!"  in  return.  The  British  detachment  retreated 
in  disorder,  but  their  main  body  was  too  strong  to  be 
attacked,  so  they  disabled  a  few  cannon,  destroyed 
some  barrels  of  flour,  cut  down  the  liberty-pole,  set 
fire  to  the  court-house,  and  then  began  their  return 

236 


ZJ/ 


LEXINGTON    GREEN 

If  they  want  a  war,  let  it  begin  here." 


THE    DAWNING    OF    INDEPENDENCE 

march.  It  ended  in  a  flight;  they  were  exposed  to  a 
constant  guerilla  fire;  minute-men  flocked  behind 
every  tree  and  house ;  and  only  the  foresight  of  Col- 
onel Smith  in  sending  for  reinforcements  averted 
a  surrender.  At  2  p.m.,  near  Lexington,  Percy  with 
his  troops  met  the  returning  fugitives,  and  formed  a 
hollow  square,  into  which  they  ran  and  threw  them- 
selves on  the  ground  exhausted.  Then  Percy  in  turn 
fell  back.  Militia  still  came  pouring  in  from  Dorches- 
ter, Milton,  Dedham,  as  well  as  the  nearer  towns.  A 
company  from  Danvers  marched  sixteen  miles  in  four 
hours.  The  Americans  lost  ninety-three  in  killed, 
wounded,  and  missing  that  day;  the  British,  two 
hundred  and  seventy-three.  But  the  important  re- 
sult was  that  every  American  colony  now  recognized 
that  war  had  begun. 

How  men's  minds  were  affected  may  best  be  seen 
by  a  glimpse  at  a  day  in  the  life  of  one  leading  pa- 
triot.    Early  on  the  morning  of  the  19th  of  April, 
1775,  a  messenger  came  hastily  to  the  door  of  Dr. 
Joseph  Warren,  physician,  in  Boston,  and  chairman 
of  the  Boston  Committee  of  Safety,  with  the  news 
that  there  had  been  fighting  at  Lexington  and  Con- 
cord.    Dr.  Warren,  doing  first  the  duty  that  came 
nearest,  summoned  his  pupil,  Mr.  Eustis,  and  direct- 
ed him  to  take  care  of  his  patients  for  that  day; 
then  mounted  his  horse  and  rode  to  the  Charlestown 
Ferry.     As  he  entered  the  boat  he  remarked  to  an 
acquaintance:  "Keep  up  a  brave  heart.     They  have 
begun  it— that  either  party  can  do;  and  we'll  end  it 
—that  only  we  can  do."     After  landing  in  Charles- 
town  he  met  a  certain  Dr.  Welch,  who  says,  in  a 
manuscript  statement:  "  Eight  o'clock  in  the  morning 
saw  Dr.  Joseph  Warren  just  come  out  of  Boston, 

237 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

horseback.  I  said,  'Well,  they  are  gone  out.'  'Yes,' 
he  said,  '  and  we  will  be  up  with  them  before  night.'  " 
Apparently  the  two  physicians  jogged  on  together, 
tried  to  pass  Lord  Percy's  column  of  reinforcements, 
but  were  stopped  by  bayonets.  Then  Dr.  Welch 
went  home,  and  Dr.  Warren  probably  attended  a 
meeting  of  the  Committee  of  Safety,  held  "at  the 
Black  Horse  in  Menotomy,"  or  West  Cambridge. 
This  committee  had  authority  from  the  Provincial 
Congress  to  order  out  the  militia,  and  General  Heath, 
who  was  a  member  of  the  committee,  rode  to  take 
command  of  the  provincials,  with  Warren  by  his  side, 
who  was  sufficiently  exposed  that  day  to  have  a 
musket-ball  strike  the  pin  out  of  the  hair  of  his  ear- 
lock.  The  two  continued  together  till  the  British 
army  had  crossed  Charlestown  Neck  on  its  retreat, 
and  made  a  stand  on  Bunker  Hill.  There  they  were 
covered  by  the  ships.  The  militia  were  ordered  to 
pursue  no  further,  and  General  Heath  held  the  first 
council  of  war  of  the  Revolution  at  the  foot  of  Pros- 
pect Hill. 

With  the  fervor  of  that  day's  experience  upon  him 
Warren  wrote,  on  the  day  following,  this  circular  to 
the  town  in  behalf  of  the  Committee  of  Safety.  The 
original  still  exists  in  the  Massachusetts  archives, 
marked  with  much  interlineation. 

"Gentlemen, — The  barbarous  murders  committed  on  our 
innocent  brethren  on  Wednesday,  the  19th  instant,  have 
made  it  absolutely  necessary  that  we  immediately  raise  an 
army  to  defend  our  wives  and  our  children  from  the  butch- 
ering hands  of  an  inhuman  soldiery,  who,  incensed  at  the 
obstacles  they  met  with  in  their  bloody  progress,  and  enraged 
at  being  repulsed  from  the  field  of  slaughter,  will  without 
the  least  doubt  take  the  first  opportunity  in  their  power  to 
ravage  this  devoted  country  with  fire  and  sword.     We  con- 

238 


THE    DAWNING    OF    INDEPENDENCE 

jure  you,  therefore,  by  all  that  is  dear,  by  all  that  is  sacred, 
that  you  give  all  assistance  possible  in  forming  an  army. 
Our  all  is  at  stake.  Death  and  devastation  are  the  instant 
consequences  of  delay.  Every  moment  is  infinitely  pre- 
cious. An  hour  lost  may  deluge  your  country  in  blood  and 
entail  perpetual  slavery  upon  the  few  of  your  posterity  who 
may  survive  the  carnage.  We  beg  and  entreat,  as  you  will 
answer  to  your  country,  to  your  own  consciences,  and, 
above  all,  as  you  will  answer  to  God  himself,  that  you  will 
hasten  and  encourage  by  all  possible  means  the  enlistment 
of  men  to  form  the  army,  and  send  them  forward  to  head- 
quarters at  Cambridge  with  that  expedition  which  the  vast 
importance  and  instant  urgency  of  the  affair  demand."      * 

It  is  always  hard  to  interpret  the  precise  condition 
of  public  feeling  just  before  a  war.  It  is  plain  that 
the  Massachusetts  committee  expected  something 
more  than  a  contest  of  words  when  they  made  so 
many  preparations.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  evi- 
dent that  hardly  any  one  looked  forward  to  any  serious 
and  prolonged  strife.  Dr.  Warren  wrote,  soon  after 
the  19th  of  April:  "The  people  never  seemed  in  ear- 
nest about  the  matter  until  after  the  engagement  of 
the  19th  ult.,  and  I  verily  believe  that  the  night 
preceding  the  barbarous  outrages  committed  by  the 
soldiery  at  Lexington,  Concord,  etc.,  there  were  not 
fifty  people  in  the  whole  colony  that  ever  expected 
any  blood  would  be  shed  in  the  contest  between  us 
and  Great  Britain."  Yet  two  days  after  the  fight  at 
Lexington  the  Massachusetts  Committee  of  Safety 
resolved  to  enlist  eight  thousand  men.  Two  days  after 
that  the  news  reached  New  York  at  noon.  There 
was  a  popular  outbreak;  the  royal  troops  were  dis- 
armed, the  fort  and  magazines  seized,  and  two  trans- 
ports for  Boston  unloaded.  At  five  on  Monday  after- 
noon the  tidings  reached  Philadelphia,  when  the  bell 

239 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

in  Independence  Hall  was  rung  and  the  people  gath- 
ered in  numbers.  When  it  got  so  far  as  Charleston, 
South  Carolina,  the  people  seized  the  arsenal  and  the 
Provincial  Congress  proclaimed  them  "ready  to  sac- 
rifice their  lives  and  fortunes."  In  Savannah,  Geor- 
gia, a  mob  took  possession  of  the  powder-magazine 
and  raised  a  liberty-pole.  In  Kentucky  a  party  of 
hunters,  hearing  of  the  battle,  gave  their  encamp- 
ment the  name  of  Lexington,  which  it  still  bears; 
and  thus  the  news  went  on.  * 

•  Meanwhile,  on  May  ioth,  the  Continental  Congress 
convened,  and  on  the  same  day  Ethan  Allen  took 
possession  of  the  strong  fortress  of  Ticonderoga.  It 
was  the  first  act  of  positive  aggression  by  the  pa- 
triotic party,  for  at  both  Lexington  and  Concord  they 
were  acting  on  the  defensive.  The  expedition  was 
planned  in  Connecticut  and  reinforced,  in  western 
Massachusetts,  but  the  main  reliance  was  to  be 
placed  on  Ethan  Allen  and  his  "Green  Mountain 
Boys,"  whose  daring  and  energy  were  already  well 
known.  Benedict  Arnold,  who  had  been  commis- 
sioned in  Massachusetts  for  the  same  purpose,  ar- 
rived only  in  time  to  join  the  expedition  as  a  vol- 
unteer. On  May  10,  1775,  eighty-three  men  crossed 
the  lake  with  Allen.  When  they  had  landed,  he 
warned  them  that  it  was  a  dangerous  enterprise, 
and  called  for  volunteers.  Every  man  volunteered. 
The  rest  took  but  a  few  moments.  They  entered 
with  a  war-whoop  the  open  wicket-gate,  pressing  by 
the  sentinel,  and  when  the  half-clad  commander  ap- 
peared and  asked  their  authority,  Allen  answered 
with  the  words  that  have  become  historic,  "In  the 
name  of  the  great  Jehovah  and  the  Continental  Con- 
gress."    The  Congress  was  only  to  meet  that  day, 

240 


THE    DAWNING    OF    INDEPENDENCE 

but  it  appeared  already  to  be  exercising  a  sort  of  ante- 
natal authority ;  and  a  fortress  which  had  cost  eight 
million  pounds  sterling  and  many  lives  was  placed  in 
its  hands  by  a  mere  stroke  of  boldness.  Crown  Point 
gave  itself  up  with  equal  ease  to  Seth  Warner,  and 
another  dramatic  surprise  was  given  to  the  new-born 
nation. 

In  the  neighborhood  of  Boston  the  month  of  May 
was  devoted  to  additional  preparations,  and  to  what 
are  called,  in  the  old  stage  directions  of  Shakespeare's 
plays,  "  alarums  and  excursions."  At  one  time,  when 
a  sally  from  Boston  was  expected,  the  Committee  of 
Safety  ordered  the  officers  of  the  ten  nearest  towns 
to  assemble  one-half  the  militia  and  all  the  minute- 
men  and  march  to  Roxbury.  While  this  was  being 
done,  General  Thomas,  with  an  ingenuity  quite  in 
the  style  of  the  above  stage  motto,  marched  his  seven 
hundred  men  round  and  round  a  high  hill,  visible 
from  Boston,  to  mislead  the  British.  At  another 
time,  when  men  were  more  numerous,  General  Put- 
nam marched  all  the  troops  in  Cambridge,  twenty- 
two  hundred  in  number,  to  Charlestown  Ferry,  the 
column  being  spread  over  a  mile  and  a  half,  and  pass- 
ing under  the  guns  of  the  British  without  attack.  At 
another  time,  "all  of  Weymouth,  Braintree,  and 
Hingham,"  according  to  Mrs.  Adams,  turned  out  to 
drive  away  a  British  detachment  from  Grape  Island, 
where  the  Americans  then  landed,  burned  a  quantity 
of  hay,  and. brought  away  cattle.  A  larger  skirmish 
took  place  at  Noddle's  Island,  near  East  Boston, 
where  the  Americans  destroyed  a  schooner,  dis- 
mantled a  sloop,  and  captured  twelve  swivels  and 
four  4 -pound  cannon.  Putnam  commanded  in 
this  engagement,  and  the  enthusiasm  which  it 
16  241 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

called  out  secured  his  unanimous  election  as  major- 
general. 

Meantime  the  Provincial  troops  were  gathering  for 
what  the  Essex  Gazette  of  June  8th  called,  with  rath- 
er premature  admiration,  "  the  grand  American  army" 
— an  army  whose  returns  for  June  9th  showed  7644 
men.  "  Nothing  could  be  in  a  more  confused  state," 
wrote  Dr.  Eliot,  "  than  the  army  which  first  assembled 
at  Cambridge.  This  undisciplined  body  of  men  were 
kept  together  by  a  few  who  deserved  well  of  their 
country."  President  John  Adams,  writing  long  after 
(June  19,  18 18),  thus  summed  up  the  condition  of 
these  forces: 

"The  army  at  Cambridge  was  not  a  national  army,  for 
there  was  no  nation.  It  was  not  a  United  States  army,  for 
there  were  no  United  States.  It  was  not  an  army  of  united 
colonies,  for  it  could  not  be  said  in  any  sense  that  the  col- 
onies were  united.  The  centre  of  their  union,  the  Congress 
of  Philadelphia,  had  not  adopted  nor  acknowledged  the 
army  at  Cambridge.  It  was  not  a  New  England  army,  for 
New  England  had  not  associated.  New  England  had  no 
legal  legislature,  nor  any  common  executive  authority,  even 
upon  the  principles  of  original,  authority,  or  even  of  original 
power  in  the  people.  Massachusetts  had  her  army,  Connect- 
icut her  army,  New  Hampshire  her  army,  and  Rhode  Isl- 
and her  army.  These  four  armies  met  at  Cambridge,  and 
imprisoned  the  British  army  in  Boston.  But  who  was  the 
sovereign  of  this  united,  or  rather  congregated,  army,  and 
who  its  commander-in-chief  ?  It  had  none.  Putnam,  Poor, 
and  Greene  were  as  independent  of  Ward  as  Ward  was  of 
them." 

This  was  the  state  of  the  forces  outside,  while  the 
army  inside  was  impatiently  waiting  for  reinforce- 
ments and  chafing  at  the  ignoble  delay.  On  May 
25th  three  British  generals  (Howe,  Clinton,  and  Bur- 

242 


THE    DAWNING    OF    INDEPENDENCE 

goyne)  arrived  with  troops.  The  newspapers  of  the 
day  say  that  when  these  officers  were  going  into 
Boston  Harbor  they  met  a  packet  coming  out,  when 
General  Burgoyne  asked  the  skipper  of  the  packet 
what  news  there  was.  And  being  told  that  the  town 
was  surrounded  by  ten  thousand  country  people, 
asked  how  many  regulars  there  were  in  Boston;  and 
being  answered,  "  About  five  thousand,"  cried  out, 
with  astonishment:  "What!  and  ten  thousand  peas- 
ants keep  five  thousand  king's  troops  shut  up!  Well, 
let  us  get  in,  and  we'll  soon  find  elbow-room."  After 
this  conversation  the  nickname  of  "  Elbow-room  "  was 
permanently  fastened  on  General  Burgoyne.  He 
used  to  relate  that  after  his  reverses,  while  a  prisoner 
of  war,  he  was  received  with  great  courtesy  by  the 
people  of  Boston  as  he  stepped  from  the  Charlestown 
ferry-boat,  but  was  a  little  annoyed  when  an  old  lady, 
perched  on  a  shed  above  the  crowd,  cried  out,  in  a 
shrill  voice:  "Make  way!  make  way!  The  general's 
coming.     Give  him  elbow-room." 

Two  days  before  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  Mrs. 
Adams  wrote  to  her  husband,  John  Adams:  "Gage's 
proclamation  you  will  receive  by  this  conveyance, 
and  the  records  of  time  cannot  produce  a  blacker 
page.  Satan  when  driven  from  the  realms  of  bliss 
exhibited  not  more  malice.  Surely  the  father  of  lies 
is  superseded.  Yet  we  think  it  the  best  proclamation 
he  could  have  issued."  This  proclamation  announced 
martial  law,  but  offered  pardon  to  those  who  would 
give  in  their  allegiance  to  the  government,  "except- 
ing only  from  the  benefit  of  such  pardon  Samuel 
Adams  and  John  Hancock,  whose  offences  are  of  too 
flagitious  a  nature  to  admit  of  any  other  considera- 
tion than  that  of  condign  punishment."     He  after- 

243 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

wards  remarked  that  the  rebels  added  "  insult  to  out- 
rage," as,  "with  a  preposterous  parade  of  military  ar- 
rangement, they  affected  to  hold  the  army  besieged." 

Two  things  contributed  to  bring  about  the  battle 
of  Bunker  Hill:  the  impatience  of  British  troops  un- 
der the  "affectation"  of  a  siege;  on  the  other  hand, 
the  great  increase  of  self-confidence  among  the  pro- 
vincials after  Lexington  and  Concord.  It  was  a 
military  necessity,  no  doubt,  for  each  side,  to  occupy 
the  Charlestown  heights;  but  there  was  also  a  grow- 
ing disposition  to  bring  matters  to  a  crisis  on  the  first 
favorable  opportunity.  Captain  (afterwards  Lord) 
Harris  wrote  home  to  England  (June  12th) :  "  I  wish 
the  Americans  may  be  brought  to  a  sense  of  their 
duty.  One  good  drubbing,  which  I  long  to  give  them 
by  way  of  retaliation,  might  have  a  good  effect  tow- 
ards it."  Dr.  Warren,  on  the  other  hand,  wrote  (May 
1 6th)  that  if  General  Gage  would  only  make  a  sally 
from  Boston,  he  would  "gratify  thousands  who  im- 
patiently wait  to  avenge  the  blood  of  their  murdered 
countrymen."  With  such  dispositions  on  both  sides, 
the  collision  could  not  be  far  off.  Kinglake  says  that 
the  reasons  for  a  battle  rarely  seem  conclusive  except 
to  a  general  who  has  some  positive  taste  for  fighting. 
Had  not  something  of  this  impulse  existed  on  both 
sides  in  1775,  the  American  rebels  would  probably 
not  have  fortified  Bunker  Hill,  or  the  English  general 
might  have  besieged  and  starved  them  out  without 
firing  a  shot. 

It  is  needless  to  add  another  to  the  innumerable 
descriptions  of  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill.  Every 
Englishman  who  comes  to  America  feels  renewed 
astonishment  that  a  monument  should  have  been 
built  on   the   scene   of  a   defeat.     Every  American 

244 


THE    DAWNING    OF    INDEPENDENCE 

school-boy  understands  that  the  monument  celebrates 
a  fact  more  important  than  most  victories — namely, 
that  the  raw  provincials  faced  the  British  army  for 
two  hours,  they  themselves  being  under  so  little  or- 
ganization that  it  is  impossible  to  tell  even  at  this 
day  who  was  their  commander;  that  they  did  this 
with  only  the  protection  of  an  unfinished  earthwork 
and  a  rail  fence,  retreating  only  when  their  powder 
was  out.  Tried  by  the  standards  of  regular  warfare 
even  at  that  day,  a  breastwork  twice  that  of  Bunker 
Hill  would  have  been  accounted  but  a  moderate  ob- 
stacle. When  in  the  previous  century  the  frightened 
citizens  of  Dorchester,  England,  had  asked  a  military 
engineer  whether  their  breastworks  could  resist  Prince 
Rupert's  soldiers,  he  answered:  "I  have  seen  them 
running  up  walls  twenty  feet  high;  these  defences  of 
yours  may  possibly  keep  them  out  half  an  hour." 
The  flimsy  defences  of  Bunker  Hill  kept  back  Gen- 
eral Howe's  soldiers  for  two  hours  and  until  the  un- 
tried provincials  had  fired  their  last  shot.  It  was  a 
fact  worth  a  monument. 

The  best  descriptions  of  the  battle  itself  are  to  be 
found  in  the  letters  of  provincial  officers  and  soldiers 
preserved  in  the  appendix  to  Richard  Frothingham's 
Siege  of  Boston.  It  is  the  descriptions  of  raw  soldiers 
that  are  always  most  graphic ;  as  they  grow  more  fa- 
miliar with  war,  their  narratives  grow  tame.  It  is 
a  sufficient  proof  of  the  impression  made  in  England 
by  the  affair  that  the  newspapers  of  that  nation,  in- 
stead of  being  exultant,  were  indignant  or  apologetic, 
and  each  had  its  own  theory  in  regard  to  "the  in- 
numerable errors  of  that  day,"  as  the  London  Chron- 
icle called  them.  Tried  by  this  test  of  contemporary 
criticism,  the  Americans  do  not  seem  to  have  exag- 

245 


HISTORY    OF    THE     UNITED    STATES 

gerated  the  real  importance  of  the  event.  "The 
ministerial  troops  gained  the  hill,"  wrote  William 
Tudor  to  John  Adams,  "but  were  victorious  losers. 
A  few  more  such  victories,  and  they  are  undone." 
By  the  official  accounts  these  troops  lost  in  killed  and 
wounded  1054 — about  one  in  four  of  their  number, 
including  an  unusually  large  proportion  of  officers; 
while  the  Americans  lost  but  half  as  many,  about  450, 
out  of  a  total  of  from  two  to  three  thousand.  But 
the  numbers  were  nothing;  the  fact  that  the  pro- 
vincials had  resisted  regular  troops  was  everything. 

The  "great  American  army"  was  still  growing  at 
Cambridge;  it  had  been  adopted  by  Congress,  even 
before  the  battle,  and  George  Washington,  of  Virginia, 
had  been  unanimously  placed  in  command,  by  rec- 
ommendation of  the  New  England  delegates.  He  as- 
sumed this  authority  beneath  the  historic  elm- tree  at 
Cambridge,  July  3,  1775.  On  the  9th  he  held  a  coun- 
cil of  war  of  the  newly  organized  general  officers. 
The  whole  force  was  still  from  New  England,  and  con- 
sisted of  16,770  infantry  and  585  artillerymen.  These 
were  organized  in  three  divisions,  each  comprising 
two  brigades,  usually  of  six  regiments  each.  They 
had  a  long  series  of  posts  to  garrison,  and  they  had 
nine  rounds  of  ammunition  per  man.  Worst  of  all, 
they  were  still,  in  the  words  of  Washington,  "a 
mixed  multitude  of  people,  under  very  little  disci- 
pline." Their  whole  appearance  under  the  new  or- 
ganization may  be  best  seen  from  the  contemporary 
description  by  the  Rev.  William  Emerson,  grand- 
father of  our  great  poet  and  essayist: 

"There  is  great  overturning  in  the  camp,  as  to  order  and 
regularity.     New  lords,  new  laws.     The  Generals  Washing- 

246 


THE    DAWNING    OF    INDEPENDENCE 

ton  and  Lee  are  upon  the  lines  every  day.  New  orders 
from  his  Excellency  are  read  to  the  respective  regiments 
every  morning  after  prayers.  The  strictest  government  is 
taking  place,  and  great  distinction  is  made  between  officers 
and  soldiers.  Every  one  is  made  to  know  his  place,  and 
keep  in  it,  or  be  tied  up  and  receive  thirty  or  forty  lashes, 
according  to  his  crime.  Thousands  are  at  work  every  day 
from  four  till  eleven  o'clock  in  the  morning.  It  is  surpris- 
ing how  much  work  has  been  done.  The  lines  are  extended 
almost  from  Cambridge  to  Mystic  River,  so  that  very  soon 
it  will  be  morally  impossible  for  the  enemy  to  get  between 
the  works,  except  in  one  place,  which  is  supposed  to  be  left 
purposely  unfortified  to  entice  the  enemy  out  of  their  for- 
tresses. Who  would  have  thought,  twelve  months  past, 
that  all  Cambridge  and  Charlestown  would  be  covered  over 
with  American  camps  and  cut  up  into  forts  and  intrench- 
ments,  and  all  the  lands,  fields,  orchards  laid  common — 
horses  and  cattle  feeding  in  the  choicest  mowing  land,  whole 
fields  of  corn  eaten  down  to  the  ground,  and  large  parks  of 
well-regulated  locusts  cut  down  for  firewood  and  other  pub- 
lic uses!  This,  I  must  say,  looks  a  little  melancholy.  My 
quarters  are  at  the  foot  of  the  famous  Prospect  Hill,  where 
such  great  preparations  are  made  for  the  reception  of  the 
enemy.  It  is  very  diverting  to  walk  among  the  camps. 
They  are  as  different  in  their  form  as  the  owners  are  in  their 
dress;  and  every  tent  is  a  portraiture  of  the  temper  and 
taste  of  the  persons  who  encamp  in  it.  Some  are  made  of 
boards  and  some  of  sail-cloth.  Some  partly  of  one  and 
some  partly  of  the  other.  Again,  others  are  made  of  stone 
and  turf,  brick  or  brush.  Some  are  thrown  up  in  a  hurry; 
others  curiously  wrought  with  doors  and  windows,  done 
with  wreaths  and  withes,  in  the  manner  of  a  basket.  Some 
are  your  proper  tents  and  marquees,  looking  like  the  regu- 
lar camp  of  the  enemy.  In  these  are  the  Rhode- 1  slanders, 
who  are  furnished  with  tent  equipage  and  everything  in  the 
most  exact  English  style.  However,  I  think  this  great 
variety  is  rather  a  beauty  than  a  blemish  in  the  army." 

All  that  was  experienced  on  both  sides  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  late  American  civil  war.  in  respect  to 

247 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

rawness  of  soldiery,  inexperienced  officers,  short  en- 
listments, local  jealousies,  was  equally  known  in  the 
early  Continental  army,  and  was  less  easily  remedied. 
Even  the  four  New  England  colonies  that  supplied 
the  first  troops  were  distrustful  of  one  another  and 
of  Washington,  and  this  not  without  some  apparent 
reason.  In  a  state  of  society  which,  as  has  been 
shown,  was  essentially  aristocratic,  they  had  sudden- 
ly lost  their  leaders.  Nearly  one-third  of  the  com- 
munity, including  almost  all  those  to  whom  social 
deference  had  been  paid,  had  taken  what  they  called 
the  loyal,  and  others  the  Tory,  side.  Why  should 
this  imported  Virginian  be  more  trustworthy  ?  Wash- 
ington in  turn  hardly  did  justice  to  the  material  with 
which  he  had  to  deal.  He  found  that  in  Massa- 
chusetts, unlike  Virginia,  the  gentry  were  loyal  to  the 
King ;  those  with  whom  he  had  to  consult  were  main- 
ly farmers  and  mechanics — a  class  such  as  hardly 
existed  in  Virginia,  and  which  was  then  far  rougher 
and  less  intelligent  than  the  same  class  now  is.  They 
were  obstinate,  suspicious,  jealous.  They  had  lost 
their  natural  leaders,  the  rich  men,  the  royal  council- 
lors, the  judges,  and  had  to  take  up  with  new  and 
improvised  guides — physicians  like  Warren — "Doc- 
tor-general" Warren,  as  the  British  officers  called  him 
— or  skilled  mechanics  like  Paul  Revere,  or  unem- 
ployed lawyers  and  business  men  like  those  whom 
Governor  Shirley  described  as  ' '  that  brace  of  Adams- 
es." The  few  men  of  property  and  consequence  who 
stood  by  them,  as  Hancock  and  Prescott,  were  the 
exceptions.  There  were  few  on  the  patriotic  side  of 
whom  it  could  be  said,  as  Hutchinson  said  of  Oxen- 
bridge  Thacher,  "He  was  not  born  a  plebeian,  but 
he  was  resolved  to  die  one."     Their  line  officers  were 

248 


THE    DAWNING    OF    INDEPENDENCE 

men  taken  almost  at  random  from  among  themselves, 
sometimes  turning  out  admirably,  sometimes  shame- 
fully. Washington  cashiered  a  colonel  and  five  cap- 
tains for  cowardice  or  dishonesty  during  the  first 
summer.  The  Continental  army  as  it  first  assembled 
in  Cambridge  was,  as  was  said  of  another  army  on  a 
later  occasion,  an  aggregation  of  town-meetings,  and, 
which  is  worse,  of  town-meetings  from  which  all  the 
accustomed  leaders  had  suddenly  been  swept  away. 
No  historian  has  yet  fully  portrayed  the  extent  to 
which  this  social  revolution  in  New  England  embar- 
rassed all  the  early  period  of  the  war,  or  has  shown 
how  it  made  the  early  Continental  troops  chafe  under 
Washington  and  Schuyler,  and  prefer  in  their  secret 
souls  to  be  led  by  General  Putnam,  whom  they  could 
call  "Old  Put,"  and  who  rode  to  battle  in  his  shirt- 
sleeves. 

And,  on  the  other  hand,  we  can  now  see  that  there 
was  some  foundation  for  these  criticisms  on  Wash- 
ington. With  the  highest  principle  and  the  firmest 
purpose,  his  views  of  military  government  were  such 
as  no  American  army  in  these  days  would  endure  for 
a  month.  His  methods  were  simply  despotic.  He 
thought  that  the  Massachusetts  Provincial  Legislat- 
ure should  impress  men  into  the  Revolutionary 
army,  should  provide  them  with  food  and  clothes 
only,  hot  with  pay,  and  should  do  nothing  for  their 
families.  He  himself,  having  declined  the  offered 
$500  per  month,  served  his  country  for  his  expenses 
only,  and  so,  he  thought,  should  they,  overlooking 
the  difference  between  those  whose  households  de- 
pended only  on  themselves  and  those  who,  like  him- 
self, had  left  slaves  at  work  on  their  broad  planta- 
tions.    He  thought  that  officers  and  men  should  be 

249 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

taken  from  different  social  classes,  that  officers  should 
have  power  almost  absolute,  and  that  camp  offences 
should  be  punished  by  the  lash.  These  imperial 
methods  produced  a  good  effect,  on  the  whole ;  prob- 
ably it  was  best  that  the  general  should  err  on  one 
side  if  the  army  erred  on  the  other.  But  there  is  no 
doubt  that  much  of  the  discontent,  the  desertion,  the 
uncertain  enlistments  of  the  next  two  years  pro- 
ceeded from  the  difficulty  found  by  Washington  in 
adapting  himself  to  the  actual  condition  of  the  peo- 
ple, especially  the  New  England  people.  It  is  the 
highest  proof  of  his  superiority  that  he  overcame  not 
merely  all  other  obstacles,  but  even  his  own  mistakes. 
Such  as  it  was,  the  army  remained  in  camp  long 
enough  to  make  everybody  impatient.  The  delay 
was  inevitable;  it  was  easier  to  provide  even  disci- 
pline than  powder ;  the  troops  kept  going  and  coming 
because  of  short  enlistments,  and  more  than  once  the 
whole  force  was  reduced  to  ten  thousand  men.  With 
that  patience  which  was  one  of  Washington's  strong- 
est military  qualities  he  withstood  dissatisfaction 
within  and  criticism  from  without  until  the  time 
had  come  to  strike  a  heavier  blow.  Then,  in  a  single 
night,  he  fortified  Dorchester  Heights,  and  this  forced 
the  evacuation  of  Boston.  The  British  generals  had 
to  seek  elbow-room  elsewhere.  They  left  Boston 
March  17,  1776,  taking  with  them  twelve  hundred 
American  loyalists,  the  bulk  of  what  called  itself  "  so- 
ciety" in  New  England.  The  navy  went  to  Halifax, 
the  army  to  New  York,  whither  Washington  soon 
took  his  Continental  army  also.  Once  there,  he 
found  new  obstacles.  From  the  very  fact  that  they 
had  not  sent  away  their  loyalists,  there  was  less  of 
unanimity  among  the  New  York  people,  nor  had  they 

250 


THE    DAWNING    OF    INDEPENDENCE 

been  so  well  trained  by  the  French  and  Indian  wars. 
The  New  England  army  was  now  away  from  home; 
it  was  unused  to  marches  or  evolutions,  but  it  had 
learned  some  confidence  in  itself  and  in  its  command- 
er, though  it  did  not  always  do  credit  to  either.  It 
was  soon  reinforced  by  troops  from  the  Middle  States, 
but  a  period  of  disaster  followed,  which  severely  test- 
ed the  generalship  of  Washington.  He  no  longer  had, 
as  in  Massachusetts,  all  the  loyalists  shut  up  in  the 
opposing  camp ;  he  found  them  scattered  through  the 
community.  Long  Island  was  one  of  their  strong- 
holds, and  received  the  Continental  army  much  less 
cordially  than  the  British  army  was  received  at  Staten 
Island.  The  Hudson  River  was  debatable  ground 
between  opposing  factions;  Washington's  own  mili- 
tary family  held  incipient  traitors.  The  outlook  was 
not  agreeable  in  any  direction,  at  least  in  the  north- 
ern colonies,  where  the  chief  contest  lay. 

There  was  a  disastrous  advance  into  Canada,  under 
Montgomery  and  Arnold,  culminating  in  the  defeat 
before  Quebec,  December  30,  1775,  and  the  retreat 
conducted  the  next  spring  by  Thomas  and  Sullivan. 
It  was  clearly  a  military  repulse,  but  it  was  a  great 
comfort  to  John  Adams,  looking  from  the  remoteness 
of  Philadelphia,  to  attribute  all  to  a  quite  subordi- 
nate cause.  "Our  misfortunes  in  Canada,"  he  wrote 
to  his  wife,  June  26,  1776,  "are  enough  to  melt  a 
heart  of  stone.  The  small-pox  is  ten  times  more  ter- 
rible than  Britons,  Canadians,  and  Indians  together. 
This  was  the  cause  of  our  precipitate  retreat  from 
Quebec."  Thus  was  disappointment  slightly  miti- 
gated; but  in  the  Carolinas,  about  the  same  time,  it 
was  the  British  who  were  disappointed,  and  the  de- 
fence of  Fort  Moultrie  especially  gave  comfort  to  all 

2S1 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  patriotic  party.  It  was  a  brilliant  achievement, 
where  the  fate  of  Charleston  and  the  Carolinas  was 
determined  by  the  defence  of  a  fortress  of  palmetto 
logs,  manned  by  less  than  five  hundred  men,  under 
Moultrie,  aided  by  Motte,  Marion,  and  the  since-re- 
nowned Sergeant  Jasper.  They  had  thirty-one  can- 
non, but  only  a  scanty  supply  of  powder.  Over  them 
waved  a  flag  of  blue,  with  a  crescent  inscribed  "  Lib- 
erty." Against  them  was  a  squadron  of  British  ships, 
some  of  them  carrying  fifty  guns ;  and  they  defended 
themselves  so  successfully  for  ten  hours  that  the 
British  invasion  was  checked  and  then  abandoned. 
This  happened  on  June  28,  1776,  just  in  time  to  coun- 
teract the  discouragement  that  came  from  the  fatal 
Canadian  campaign. 

The  encouragement  was  needed.  Just  before  the 
time  when  the  Continental  Congress  had  begun  its 
preliminary  work  on  the  great  Declaration,  General 
Joseph  Reed,  the  newly  appointed  adjutant-general, 
and  one  of  Washington's  most  trusted  associates,  was 
writing  thus  from  the  field : 

"With  an  army  of  force  before,  and  a  secret  one  behind, 
we  stand  on  a  point  of  land  with  six  thousand  old  troops, 
if  a  year's  service  of  about  half  can  entitle  them  to  this 
name,  and  about  fifteen  hundred  raw  levies  of  the  province, 
many  disaffected  and  more  doubtful.  Every  man,  from 
the  general  to  the  private,  acquainted  with  our  true  situa- 
tion, is  exceedingly  discouraged.  Had  I  known  the  true 
posture  of  affairs,  no  consideration  would  have  tempted  me 
to  take  part  in  this  scene;  and  this  sentiment  is  universal." 


XI 
THE    DECLARATION 

IN  the  days  of  the  Continental  Congress  the  dele- 
gates used  to  travel  to  the  capital,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  each  session,  from  their  several  homes,  usually 
on  horseback;  fording  streams,  sleeping  at  miserable 
country  inns,  sometimes  weather-bound  for  days, 
sometimes  making  circuits  to  avoid  threatened  dan- 
gers, sometimes  accomplishing  forced  marches  to 
reach  Philadelphia  in  time  for  some  special  vote. 
There  lie  before  me  the  unpublished  papers  of  one 
of  the  signers  of  the  great  Declaration,  and  these 
papers  comprise  the  diaries  of  several  such  journeys. 
Their  simple  records  rarely  include  bursts  of  patriot- 
ism or  predictions  of  national  glory,  but  they  contain 
many  plaintive  chronicles  of  bad  beds  and  worse 
food,  mingled  with  pleasant  glimpses  of  wayside  chat, 
and  now  and  then  a  bit  of  character-painting  that 
recalls  the  jovial  narratives  of  Fielding.  Sometimes 
they  give  a  passing  rumor  of  "the  glorious  news  of 
the  surrendering  of  the  Colonel  of  the  Queen's  Dra- 
goons with  his  whole  army,"  but  more  commonly 
they  celebrate  "milk  toddy  and  bread  and  butter" 
after  a  wetting,  or  "  the  best  dish  of  Bohea  tea  I  have 
drank  for  a  twelve  month."  When  they  arrived  at 
Philadelphia,  the  delegates  put  up  their  horses, 
changed  their  riding  gear  for  those  garments  which 

253 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Trumbull  has  immortalized,  and  gathered  to  Inde- 
pendence Hall  to  greet  their  brother  delegates,  to 
interchange  the  gossip  of  the  day,  to  repeat  Dr. 
Franklin's  last  anecdote  or  Francis  Hopkinson's  last 
joke ;  then  proceeding,  when  the  business  of  the  day 
was  opened,  to  lay  the  foundation  for  a  new  nation. 

''Before  the  19th  of  April,  1775,"  said  Jefferson, 
"  I  had  never  heard  a  whisper  of  a  disposition  to  sepa- 
rate from  the  mother-country."  Washington  said: 
"When  I  first  took  command  of  the  army" — (July  3, 
1775) — "  I  abhorred  the  idea  of  independence;  but  I 
am  now  fully  convinced  that  nothing  else  will  save 
us."  It  is  only  by  dwelling  on  such  words  as  these 
that  we  can  measure  that  vast  educational  process 
which  brought  the  American  people  to  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  in  1776. 

The  Continental  Congress,  in  the  earlier  months  of 
that  year,  had  for  many  days  been  steadily  drifting 
on  towards  the  distinct  assertion  of  separate  sover- 
eignty, and  had  declared  it  irreconcilable  with  reason 
and  a  good  conscience  for  the  colonists  to  take  the 
oath  required  for  the  support  of  the  government  un- 
der the  crown  of  Great  Britain.  But  it  was  not  till 
the  7th  of  June  that  Richard  Henry  Lee,  of  Virginia, 
rose  and  read  these  resolutions: 

"  That  these  United  Colonies  are,  and  of  right  ought  to  be, 
free  and  independent  States ;  that  they  are  absolved  from  all 
allegiance  to  the  British  Crown,  and  that  all  political  connec- 
tion between  them  and  the  State  of  Great  Britain  is,  and 
ought  to  be,  totally  dissolved. 

"  That  it  is  expedient  forthwith  to  take  the  most  effectual 
measures  for  forming  foreign  alliances. 

"  That  a  plan  of  confederation  be  prepared  and  transmitted 
to  the  respective  colonies  for  their  consideration  and  appro- 
bation." 

254 


THE    DECLARATION 

These  resolutions  were  presented  under  direct  in- 
structions from  the  Virginia  Assembly,  the  delegates 
from  that  colony  selecting  Mr.  Lee  as  their  spokes- 
man. They  were  at  once  seconded,  probably  after 
previous  understanding,  by  John  Adams,  of  Massa- 
chusetts— Virginia  and  Massachusetts  being  then  the 
leading  colonies.  It  was  a  bold  act,  for  it  was  still 
doubtful  whether  anything  better  than  a  degrading 
death  would  await  these  leaders  if  unsuccessful.  Gage 
had  written,  only  the  year  before,  of  the  prisoners 
left  in  his  hands  at  Bunker  Hill,  that  "  their  lives  were 
destined  to  the  cord."  Indeed,  the  story  runs  that  a 
similar  threat  was  almost  as  frankly  made  to  the  son 
of  Mr.  Lee,  then  a  school-boy  in  England.  He  was 
one  day  standing  near  one  of  his  teachers,  when  some 
visitor  asked  the  question,  "  What  boy  is  that  ?"  "He 
is  the  son  of  Richard  Henry  Lee,  of  America,"  the 
teacher  replied.  On  this  the  visitor  put  his  hand  on 
the  boy's  head  and  said,  "We  shall  yet  see  your 
father's  head  upon  Tower  Hill" — to  which  the  boy 
answered,  "You  may  have  it  when  you  can  get  it." 
This  was  the  way  in  which  the  danger  was  regarded 
in  England ;  and  we  know  that  Congress  directed  the 
secretary  to  omit  from  the  journals,  for  safety,  the 
names  of  the  mover  and  seconder  of  these  resolutions. 
The  record  only  says:  "Certain  resolutions  respect- 
ing independence  being  moved  and  seconded,  Re- 
solved, That  the  consideration  of  them  be  deferred 
until  to-morrow  morning;  and  that  the  members  be 
enjoined  to  attend  punctually  at  ten  o'clock,  in  order 
to  take  the  same  into  their  consideration." 

On  the  next  day  the  discussion  came  up  promptly, 
and  was  continued  through  Saturday,  June  8th,  and 
on  Monday,  June   ioth.     The  resolutions  were  op- 

255 


HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

posed,  even  with  bitterness,  by  Robert  R.  Livingston, 
of  New  York,  by  Dickinson  and  Wilson,  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, and  by  Rutledge,  of  South  Carolina.  The 
latter  is  reported  to  have  said  privately,  "that  it 
required  the  impudence  of  a  New-Englander  for  them 
in  their  disjointed  state  to  propose  a  treaty  to  a 
nation  now  at  peace ;  that  no  reason  could  be  assigned 
for  pressing  into  this  measure  but  the  reason  of  every 
madman,  a  show  of  spirit."  On  the  other  hand,  the 
impudence,  if  such  it  was  of  John  Adams  went  so 
far  as  to  defend  the  resolutions,  as  stating  "objects 
of  the  most  stupendous  magnitude,  in  which  the  lives 
and  liberties  of  millions  yet  unborn  were  intimately 
interested";  as  belonging  to  "a  revolution  the  most 
complete,  unexpected,  and  remarkable  of  any  in  the 
history  of  nations."  On  Monday  the  resolutions 
were  postponed,  by  a  vote  of  seven  colonies  against 
five,  until  that  day  three  weeks;  and  it  was  after- 
wards voted  (June  nth),  "in  the  meanwhile,  that 
no  time  be  lost,  in  case  Congress  agree  thereto,  that 
a  committee  be  appointed  to  prepare  a  declaration 
to  that  effect."  Of  this  committee  Mr.  Lee  would 
doubtless  have  been  the  chairman,  had  he  not  been 
already  on  his  way  to  Virginia  to  attend  the  sick-bed 
of  his  wife.  His  associate,  Thomas  Jefferson,  was 
named  in  his  place,  together  with  John  Adams,  of 
Massachusetts,  Benjamin  Franklin,  of  Pennsylvania, 
Roger  Sherman,  of  Connecticut,  and  Robert  R.  Liv- 
ingston, of  New  York. 

This  provided  for  the  Declaration;  and  on  the  ap- 
pointed day,  July  i,  1776,  Congress  proceeded  to  the 
discussion  of  the  momentous  resolutions.  Little  re- 
mains to  us  of  the  debate,  and  the  best  glimpse  of  the 
opening  situation  is  afforded  to  the  modern  reader 

256 


THE    DECLARATION 

through  a  letter  written  by  Mr.  Adams  to  Mercy  War- 
ren, the  historian — a  letter  dated  "Quincy,  1807," 
but  not  printed  until  1872,  when  it  was  inserted  by 
Frothingham  in  the  appendix  to  his  invaluable  Rise 
of  the  Republic  of  the  United  States.  The  important 
passage  is  as  follows: 

' '  I  remember  very  well  what  I  did  say ;  but  I  will  previous- 
ly state  a  fact  as  it  lies  in  my  memory,  which  may  be  some- 
what explanatory  of  it.      In  the  previous  multiplied  debates 
which  we  had  upon  the  subject  of  independence,  the  dele- 
gates from  New  Jersey  had  voted  against  us ;  their  constitu- 
ents were  informed  of  it  and  recalled  them,  and  sent  us  a 
new  set  on  purpose  to  vote  for  independence.     Among  these 
were   Chief-justice    Stockton   and   Dr.    Witherspoon.     In   a 
morning  when  Congress  met,  we  expected  the  question  would 
be  put  and  carried  without  any  further  debate;  because  we 
knew  we  had  a  majority,  and  thought  that  argument  had 
been  exhausted  on  both  sides,  as  indeed  it  was,  for  nothing 
new  was  ever  afterwards  advanced  on  either  side.     But  the 
Jersey  delegates,  appearing  for  the  first  time,  desired  that 
the   question  might   be   discussed.     We   observed  to  them 
that  the  question  was  so  public,  and  had  been  so  long  dis- 
cussed in  pamphlets,  newspapers,  and  at  every  fireside,  that 
they  could  not  be  uninformed,   and  must  have  made  up 
their  minds.     They  said  it  was  true  they  had  not  been  in- 
attentive to  what  had  been  passing  abroad,  but  they  had 
not  heard  the  arguments  in  Congress,  and  did  not  incline  to 
give  their  opinions  until  they  should  hear  the  sentiments  of 
members  there.      Tudge  Stockton  was  most  particularly  im- 
portunate till  the  members  began  to  say,  'Let  the  gentle- 
men be  gratified,'  and  the  eyes  of  the  assembly  were    turned 
upon  me,  and  several  of  them  said,  'Come,  Mr.  Adams;  you 
have  had  the  subject  longer  at  heart  than  any  of  us,  and 
you  must  recapitulate   the   arguments.'     I   was   somewhat 
confused  at  this  personal  application  to  me,  and  would  have 
been  very  glad  to  be  excused;  but  as  no  other  person  rose, 
after  some  time  I  said,  'This  is  the  first  time  in  my  life  when 
I  seriously  wished  for  the  genius  and  eloquence  of  the  cele- 
brated orators  of  Athens  and  Rome:  called  in  this  unex- 
17  257 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

pected  and  unprepared  manner  to  exhibit  all  the  arguments 
in  favor  of  a  measure  the  most  important,  in  my  judgment, 
that  had  ever  been  discussed  in  civil  or  political  society,  I 
had  no  art  or  oratory  to  exhibit,  and  could  produce  nothing 
but  simple  reason  and  plain  common-sense.  I  felt  myself 
oppressed  by  the  weight  of  the  subject,  and  I  believed  if 
Demosthenes  or  Cicero  had  ever  been  called  to  deliberate 
on  so  great  a  question,  neither  would  have  relied  on  his  own 
talents  without  a  supplication  to  Minerva  and  a  sacrifice  to 
Mercury  or  the  God  of  Eloquence.'  All  this,  to  be  sure,  was 
but  a  flourish,  and  not,  as  I  conceive,  a  very  bright  exordium ; 
but  I  felt  awkwardly.  .  .  . 

"I  wish  some  one  had  remembered  the  speech,  for  it  is 
almost  the  only  one  I  ever  made  that  I  wish  was  literally 
preserved." 

"John  Adams,"  said  Jefferson,  long  afterwards,  to 
Daniel  Webster  and  George  Ticknor, ' '  was  our  Colos- 
sus on  the  floor.  He  was  not  graceful,  nor  elegant, 
nor  remarkably  fluent,  but  he  came  out  occasionally 
with  a  power  of  thought  and  expression  that  moved 
us  from  our  seats."  It  seems  a  pity  that  no  adequate 
specimens  remain  to  us  of  this  straightforward  elo- 
quence ;  and  yet  it  is  cause  for  congratulation,  on  the 
whole,  that  the  only  speech  fully  written  out  after 
that  debate  was  the  leading  argument  for  the  nega- 
tive. Long  years  have  made  us  familiar  with  the 
considerations  that  led  to  national  independence ;  the 
thing  of  interest  is  to  know  what  was  said  against  it ; 
and  this  is  just  what  we  happen  to  know  through  the 
record  of  a  single  speech. 

After  any  great  measure  has  been  carried  through, 
men  speedily  forget  the  objections  and  the  objectors, 
and  in  a  hundred  years  can  hardly  believe  that  any 
serious  opposition  was  ever  made.  Little  as  the 
writings  of  John  Dickinson  are  now  read,  up  to  the 
year  1776  he  had  doubtless  contributed  more  than 

2*8 


THE    DECLARATION 

any  one  man,  except  Thomas  Paine,  to  the  political 
emancipation,  so  far  as  the  press  could  effect  it,  of 
the  American  people.  The  Farmer's  Letters  had  been 
reprinted  in  London  with  a  preface  by  Dr.  Franklin ; 
they  had  been  translated  into  French,  and  they  had 
been  more  widely  read  in  America  than  any  patriotic 
pamphlet,  excepting  only  the  "Common  Sense"  of 
Paine.  Yet  their  author  had  to  meet  criticism  and 
neglect  because  he  shrank  at  the  last  moment  before 
the  storm  he  had  aroused.  Who  can  deny  the 
attribute  of  moral  courage  to  the  man  who  stood 
up  in  the  Continental  Congress  to  argue  against 
independence  ?  But  John  Adams  reports  that  Dick- 
inson's mother  used  to  say  to  him:"  Johnny,  you  will 
be  hanged ;  your  estate  will  be  forfeited  or  confiscated ; 
you  will  leave  your  excellent  wife  a  widow,"  and  so 
on;  and  Adams  admits  that  if  his  wife  and  mother 
had  used  such  language,  it  would  have  made  him 
miserable  at  least.  And  it  was  under  this  restrain- 
ing influence,  so  unlike  the  fearless  counsels  of  Abby 
Adams,  that  Dickinson  rose  on  that  first  of  July  and 
spoke  thus: 

"I  value  the  love  of  my  country  as  I  ought,  but  I  value 
my  country  more;  and  I  desire  this  illustrious  assembly  to 
witness  the  integrity,  if  not  the  policy,  of  my  conduct.  The 
first  campaign  will  be  decisive  of  the  controversy.  The 
Declaration  will  not  strengthen  us  by  one  man,  or  by  the 
least  supply,  while  it  may  expose  our  soldiers  to  additional 
cruelties  and  outrages.  Without  some  prelusory  trials  of 
our  strength,  we  ought  not  to  commit  our  country  upon  an 
alternative,  where  to  recede  would  be  infamy  and  to  per- 
sist might  be  destruction. 

"No  instance  is  recollected  of  a  people,  without  a  battle 
fought  or  an  ally  gained,  abrogating  forever  their  connec- 
tion with  a  warlike  commercial  empire.     It  might  unite  the 

259 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 


♦ 


different  parties  in  Great  Britain  against  us,  and  it  might 
create  disunion  among  ourselves. 

"With  other  powers  it  would  rather  injure  than  avail  us. 
Foreign  aid  will  not  be  obtained  but  by  our  actions  in  the 
field,  which  are  the  only  evidences  of  our  union  and  vigor 
that  will  be  respected.  In  the  war  between  the  United 
Provinces  and  Spain,  France  and  England  assisted  the  prov- 
inces before  they  declared  themselves  independent;  if  it  is 
the  interest  of  any  European  kingdom  to  aid  us,  we  shall 
be  aided  without  such  a  declaration;  if  it  is  not,  we  shall 
not  be  aided  with  it.  Before  such  an  irrevocable  step  shall 
be  taken,  we  ought  to  know  the  disposition  of  the  great 
powers,  and  how  far  they  will  permit  one  or  more  of  them 
to  interfere.  The  erection  of  an  independent  empire  on  this 
continent  is  a  phenomenon  in  the  world;  its  effects  will  be 
immense,  and  may  vibrate  round  the  globe.  How  they  may 
affect,  or  be  supposed  to  affect,  old  establishments  is  not 
ascertained.  It  is  singularly  disrespectful  to  France  to 
make  the  Declaration  before  her  sense  is  known,  as  we  have 
sent  an  agent  expressly  to  inquire  whether  such  a  Declara- 
tion would  be  acceptable  to  her,  and  we  have  reason  to  be- 
lieve he  is  now  arrived  at  the  Court  of  Versailles.  The  meas- 
ure ought  to  be  delayed  till  the  common  interests  shall  in 
the  best  manner  be  consulted  by  common  consent.  Be- 
sides, the  door  to  accommodation  with  Great  Britain  ought 
not  to  be  shut,  until  we  know  what  terms  can  be  obtained 
from  some  competent  power.  Thus  to  break  with  her  be- 
fore we  have  compacted  with  another  is  to  make  experi- 
ments on  the  lives  and  liberties  of  my  countrymen,  which 
I  would  sooner  die  than  agree  to  make.  At  best,  it  is  to 
throw  us  into  the  hands  of  some  other  power  and  to  lie  at 
mercy,  for  we  shall  have  passed  the  river  that  is  never  to 
be  repassed.  We  ought  to  retain  the  Declaration  and  re- 
main masters  of  our  own  fame  and  fate." 


These  were  the  opinions  of  the  ' '  Pennsylvania 
Farmer,"  as  condensed  by  Bancroft  from  Mr.  Dick- 
inson's own  report,  no  words  being  employed  but 
those  of  the  orator.     In  the  field  some  of  the  bravest 

260 


THE    DECLARATION 

men  were  filled  with  similar  anxieties.  The  letter, 
already  quoted,  from  the  new  adjutant-general, 
Joseph  Reed,  describing  the  military  situation,  was 
not  laid  before  the  Congress  indeed,  but  one  from 
General  Washington,  giving  essentially  the  same 
facts,  was  read  at  the  opening  of  that  day's  session. 
In  spite  of  this  mournful  beginning,  and  notwith- 
standing the  arguments  of  Mr.  Dickinson,  the  pur- 
pose of  the  majority  in  the  legislative  body  was  clear 
and  strong ;  and  the  pressure  from  their  constituencies 
was  yet  stronger.  Nearly  every  colony  had  already 
taken  separate  action  towards  independence,  and  on 
that  first  day  of  July  the  Continental  Congress  adopt- 
ed, in  committee,  the  first  resolution  offered  by  the 
Virginia  delegates.  There  were  nine  colonies  in  the 
affirmative,  Pennsylvania  and  South  Carolina  voting 
in  the  negative,  the  latter  unanimously,  Delaware 
being  divided,  and  New  York  not  voting,  the  dele- 
gates from  that  colony  favoring  the  measure,  but 
having  as  yet  no  instructions. 

When  the  resolutions  came  up  for  final  action  in 
convention  the  next  day,  the  state  of  things  had 
changed.  Dickinson  and  Morris,  of  Pennsylvania, 
had  absented  themselves  and  left  an  affirmative  ma- 
jority in  the  delegation ;  Caesar  Rodney  had  returned 
from  an  absence  and  brought  Delaware  into  line ;  and 
South  Carolina,  though  still  disapproving  the  resolu- 
tions, joined  in  the  vote  for  the  sake  of  unanimity,  as 
had  been  half  promised  by  Edward  Rutledge  the  day 
before.  Thus  twelve  colonies  united  in  the  momen- 
tous action;  and  New  York,  though  not  voting,  yet 
endorsed  it  through  a  State  convention  within  a 
week.  The  best  outburst  of  contemporary  feeling  over 
the  great  event  is  to  be  found  in  a  letter  by  John 

261 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Adams  to  his  wife,  dated  July  3,  1776.     He  writes  as 
follows : 

"Yesterday  the  greatest  question  was  decided  which  ever 
was  debated  in  America,  and  a  greater,  perhaps,  never  was 
nor  will  be  decided  among  men.  .  .  .  When  I  look,  back  to 
1 761,  .  .  .  and  recollect  the  series  of  political  events,  the 
chain  of  causes  and  effects,  I  am  surprised  at  the  sudden- 
ness as  well  as  greatness  of  this  revolution.  Britain  has 
been  filled  with  folly  and  America  with  wisdom.  ...  It  is 
the  will  of  Heaven  that  the  two  countries  should  be  sun- 
dered forever.  It  may  be  the  will  of  Heaven  that  America 
shall  suffer  calamities  still  more  wasting  and  distresses  yet 
more  dreadful.  ...  But  I  submit  all  my  hopes  and  fears  to 
an  overruling  Providence,  in  which,  unfashionable  as  the 
faith  may  be,  I  firmly  believe.  .  .  . 

"The  second  day  of  July,  1776,  will  be  the  most  memor- 
able epocha  in  the  history  of  America.  I  am  apt  to  believe 
that  it  will  be  celebrated  by  succeeding  generations  as  the 
great  anniversary  festival.  It  ought  to  be  commemorated 
as  the  day  of  deliverance,  by  solemn  acts  of  devotion  to  God 
Almighty,  .  .  .  from  one  end  of  the  continent  to  the  other, 
from  this  time  forward  for  evermore. 

"You  will  think  me  transported  with  enthusiasm,  but  I 
am  not.  I  am  well  aware  of  the  toil  and  blood  and  treasure 
that  it  will  cost  us  to  maintain  this  declaration  and  sup- 
port and  defend  these  States.  Yet,  through  all  the  gloom, 
I  can  see  the  rays  of  ravishing  light  and  glory;  I  can  see 
that  the  end  is  worth  all  the  means.  And  that  posterity 
will  triumph  in  that  day's  transaction,  even  though  we 
should  rue  it,  which  I  trust  to  God  we  shall  not." 

John  Adams  was  mistaken  in  one  prediction.  It 
is  the  Fourth  of  July,  not  the  Second,  which  has  been 
accepted  by  Americans  as  ' '  the  most  memorable 
epocha."  This  is  one  of  the  many  illustrations  of  the 
fact  that  words  as  well  as  deeds  are  needful,  since  a 
great  act  may  seem  incomplete  until  it  has  been  put 
into  a  fitting  form  of  words.     It  was  the  vote  of  July 

262 


THE    DECLARATION 

2d  that  changed  the  thirteen  colonies  into  indepen- 
dent States;  the  Declaration  of  Independence  only 
promulgated  the  fact  and  assigned  its  reasons.  Had 
this  great  proclamation  turned  out  to  be  a  confused 
or  ill-written  document,  it  would  never  have  eclipsed 
in  fame  the  original  Resolution,  which  certainly  had 
no  such  weak  side.  But  this  danger  was  well  averted, 
for  the  Declaration  was  to  be  drawn  up  by  Jefferson, 
unsurpassed  in  his  time  for  power  of  expression.  He 
accordingly  framed  it ;  Franklin  and  Adams  suggested 
a  few  verbal  amendments;  Sherman  and  Livingston 
had  none  to  offer;  and  the  document  stood  ready  to 
be  reported  to  the  Congress. 

Some  of  those  who  visit  Philadelphia  may  feel  an 
interest  in  knowing  that  the  "  title-deed  of  our  liber- 
ties," as  Webster  called  it,  was  written  in  ''a  new 
brick  house  out  in  the  fields"— a  house  standing 
at  the  southwest  corner  of  Market  and  Seventh 
streets,  less  than  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  Indepen- 
dence Square.  Jefferson  had  there  rented  a  parlor  and 
bedroom,  ready  furnished,  on  the  second  floor,  for 
thirty-five  shillings  a  week;  and  he  wrote  the  Declara- 
tion in  this  parlor,  upon  a  little  writing-desk,  three 
inches  high,  which  still  exists.  In  that  modest  room 
we  may  fancy  Franklin  and  Adams  listening  critically, 
Sherman  and  Livingston  approvingly,  to  what  was 
for  them  simply  the  report  of  a  committee.  Jefferson 
had  written  it,  we  are  told,  without  the  aid  of  a  single 
book;  he  was  merely  putting  into  more  systematic 
form  a  series  of  points  long  familiar;  and  Parton  may 
be  right  in  the  opinion  that  the  writer  was  not  con- 
scious of  any  very  strenuous  exercise  of  his  faculties, 
or  of  any  very  eminent  service  done. 

Nothing  is  so  difficult  as  to  transport  ourselves  to 

263 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  actual  mood  of  mind  in  which  great  historic  acts 
were  performed,  or  in  which  their  actors  habitually 
dwelt.  Thus,  on  the  seventh  day  of  that  July,  John 
Adams  wrote  to  his  wife  a  description  of  the  condi- 
tion of  our  army,  so  thrilling  and  harrowing  that  it 
was,  as  he  says,  enough  to  fill  one  with  horror.  We 
fancy  him  spending  that  day  in  sackcloth  and  ashes; 
but  there  follows  on  the  same  page  another  letter, 
written  to  the  same  wife  on  the  same  day— a  long 
letter  devoted  solely  to  a  discourse  on  the  varieties 
of  English  style,  in  which  he  urges  upon  her  a  care- 
ful reading  of  Rollin's  "  Belles-lettres"  and  the  Epis- 
tles of  Pliny  the  Younger.  Yet  any  one  who  has 
ever  taken  part  in  difficult  or  dangerous  actions  can 
understand  the  immense  relief  derived  from  that  half- 
hour's  relapse  into  "the  still  air  of  delightful  studies." 
And  it  is  probable  that  Jefferson  and  his  companions, 
even  while  discussing  the  title-deed  of  our  liberties, 
may  have  let  their  talk  stray  over  a  hundred  collateral 
themes  as  remote  from  the  immediate  task  as  were 
Pliny  and  Rollin. 

During  three  days — the  second,  third,  and  fourth 
of  July — the  Declaration  was  debated  in  the  Congress. 
The  most  vivid  historic  glimpse  of  that  debate  is  in 
Franklin's  consolatory  anecdote,  told  to  Jefferson, 
touching  John  Thompson,  the  hatter.  The  amend- 
ments adopted  by  Congress  have  always  been  ac- 
counted as  improvements,  because  tending  in  the 
direction  of  conciseness  and  simplicity,  though  the 
loss  of  that  stern  condemnation  of  the  slave-trade — 
"a  piratical  warfare  against  human  nature  itself" — 
has  always  been  regretted.  The  amended  document 
was  finally  adopted,  like  the  Virginia  resolution,  by 
the  vote  of  twelve  colonies,  New  York  still  abstaining. 

264 


THE    DECLARATION 

If  Thomas  McKean's  reminiscences  at  eighty  can  be 
trusted,  it  cost  another  effort  to  secure  this  strong  vote, 
and  Caesar  Rodney  had  again  to  be  sent  for  to  secure 
the  Delaware  delegation.  McKean  says,  in  a  letter 
written  in  1 814  to  John  Adams,  "I  sent  an  express 
for  Csesar  Rodney  to  Dover,  in  the  county  of  Kent,  in 
Delaware,  at  my  private  expense,  whom  I  met  at  the 
State-house  door  on  the  4th  of  July,  in  his  boots;  he 
resided  eighty  miles  from  the  city,  and  just  arrived 
as  Congress  met."  Jefferson  has,  however,  thrown 
much  doubt  over  these  octogenarian  recollections 
by  McKean,  and  thinks  that  he  confounded  the  dif- 
ferent votes.  There  is  little  doubt  that  this  hurried 
night  ride  by  Rodney  was  in  preparation  for  the 
Second  of  July,  not  the  Fourth,  and  that  the  vote 
on  the  Fourth  went  quietly  through. 

But  the  Declaration,  being  adopted,  was  next  to 
be  signed ;  and  here  again  we  come  upon  an  equally 
great  contradiction  in  testimony.     This  same  Thomas 
McKean  wrote  in  18 14  to  ex-President  Adams,  speak- 
ing of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  "No  man 
signed  it  on  that  day"— namely,  July  4,  1776.     Jef- 
ferson, on  the  other  hand,  writing  some  years  later, 
thought  that  Mr.   McKean's  memory  had  deceived 
him,  Jefferson  himself  asserting,  from  his  early  notes, 
that "  the  Declaration  was  reported  by  the  Committee, 
agreed  to  by  the  House,  and  signed  by  every  member 
present  except  Mr.  Dickinson."     But  Jefferson,  who 
was  also  an  octogenarian,  seems  to  have  forgotten  the 
subsequent  signing  of  the  Declaration  on  parchment, 
until  it  was  recalled  to  his  memory,  as  he  states,  a  few 
years  later.     If  there  was  a  previous  signing  of  a 
written   document,    the   manuscript   itself   has   long 
since  disappeared,  and  the  accepted  historic  opinion 

265 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

is  that  both  these  venerable  witnesses  were  mistaken; 
that  the  original  Declaration  was  signed  only  by  the 
president  and  secretary,  John  Hancock  and  Charles 
Thomson,  and  that  the  general  signing  of  the  parch- 
ment copy  took  place  on  August  2d.  It  is  probable, 
at  least,  that  fifty-four  of  the  fifty-six  names  were 
appended  on  that  day,  and  that  it  was  afterwards 
signed  by  Thornton,  of  New  Hampshire,  who  was  not 
then  a  member,  and  by  McKean,  who  was  then  tem- 
porarily absent. 

Jefferson  used  to  relate,  "with  much  merriment," 
says  Parton,  that  the  final  signing  of  the  Declaration 
was  hastened  by  a  very  trivial  circumstance.  Near 
the  hall  was  a  large  stable,  whence  the  flies  issued  in 
legions.  Gentlemen  were  in  those  days  peculiarly 
sensitive  to  such  discomforts  by  reason  of  silk  stock- 
ings; and  when  this  annoyance,  superadded  to  the 
summer  heat  of  Philadelphia,  had  become  intolerable, 
they  hastened  to  bring  the  business  to  a  conclu- 
sion. This  may  equally  well  refer,  however,  to  the 
original  vote;  flies  are  flies,  whether  in  July  or  in 
August. 

American  tradition  has  clung  to  the  phrases  as- 
signed to  the  different  participants  in  this  scene :  John 
Hancock's  commentary  on  his  own  bold  handwriting, 
"  There,  John  Bull  may  read  my  name  without  spec- 
tacles" ;  Franklin's,  "We  must  hang  together,  or  else, 
most  assuredly,  we  shall  all  hang  separately"  ;  and  the 
heavy  Harrison's  remark  to  the  slender  Elbridge 
Gerry,  that  in  that  event  Gerry  would  be  kicking  in 
the  air  long  after  his  own  fate  would  be  settled.  These 
things  may  or  may  not  have  been  said,  but  it  gives  a 
more  human  interest  to  the  event  when  we  know  that 
they  were  even  rumored.     What  we  long  to  know  is, 

266 


THE    DECLARATION 

that  the  great  acts  of  history  were  done  by  men  like 
ourselves,  and  not  by  dignified  machines. 

This  is  the  story  of  the  signing.  Of  the  members 
who  took  part  in  that  silent  drama  of  1776,  some 
came  to  greatness  in  consequence,  becoming  presi- 
dents, vice-presidents,  governors,  chief -justices,  or 
judges;  others  came,  in  equally  direct  consequence, 
to  poverty,  flight,  or  imprisonment.  "Hunted  like 
a  fox  by  the  enemy,"  "a  prisoner  twenty-four  hours 
without  food,"  "not  daring  to  remain  two  successive 
nights  beneath  one  shelter" — these  are  the  records 
we  may  find  in  the  annals  of  the  Revolution  in  regard 
to  many  a  man  who  stood  by  John  Hancock  on  that 
summer  day  to  sign  his  name.  It  is  a  pleasure  to 
think  that  not  one  of  them  ever  disgraced,  publicly 
or  conspicuously,  the  name  he  had  written.  Of  the 
rejoicings  which,  everywhere  throughout  the  colonies, 
followed  the  signing,  the  tale  has  been  often  told.  It 
has  been  told  so  often,  if  the  truth  must  be  con- 
fessed, that  it  is  not  now  easy  to  distinguish  the  ro- 
mance from  the  simple  fact.  The  local  antiquarians 
of  Philadelphia  bid  us  dismiss  forever  from  the  rec- 
ord the  picturesque  old  bell-ringer  and  his  eager  boy, 
waiting  breathlessly  to  announce  to  the  assembled 
thousands  the  final  vote  of  Congress  on  the  Declara- 
tion. The  tale  is  declared  to  be  a  pure  fiction,  of 
which  there  exists  not  even  a  local  tradition.  The 
sessions  of  Congress  were  then  secret,  and  there  was 
no  expectant  crowd  outside.  It  was  not  till  the  5th 
of  July  that  Congress  sent  out  circulars  announcing 
the  Declaration ;  not  till  the  6th  that  it  appeared  in 
a  Philadelphia  newspaper ;  and  not  till  the  8th  that 
it  was  read  by  John  Nixon  in  the  yard  of  Indepen- 
dence Hall.     It  was  read  from  an  observatory  there 

267 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

erected  by  the  American  Philosophical  Society,  seven 
years  before,  to  observe  the  transit  of  Venus.  The 
King's  arms  over  the  door  of  the  Supreme  Court  room 
in  Independence  Hall  were  torn  down  by  a  committee 
of  the  Volunteer  force  called  "  associators  " ;  these 
trophies  were  burned  in  the  evening,  in  the  presence 
of  a  great  crowd  of  citizens,  and  no  doubt  amid  the 
joyful  pealing  of  the  old  "  Independence"  bell.  There 
is  also  a  tradition  that  on  the  afternoon  of  that  day, 
or  possibly  a  day  or  two  earlier,  there  was  a  joyful 
private  celebration  of  the  great  event,  by  Jefferson 
and  others,  at  the  garden-house  of  a  country-seat  in 
Frankford  (near  Philadelphia),  then  occupied  by  Dr. 
Enoch  Edwards,  a  leading  patriot  of  that  time. 

It  is  certain  that  a  portion  of  the  signers  of  the 
Declaration  met  two  years  after,  for  a  cheery  com- 
memoration of  their  great  achievement,  in  the  Phila- 
delphia City  Tavern.  The  enjoyment  of  the  occasion 
was  enhanced  by  the  recent  deliverance  of  the  city 
from  the  presence  of  General  Howe,  and  by  the  con- 
trast between  this  festival  and  that  lately  given  by 
the  British  officers  to  him,  known  in  history  as  the 
"Meschianza."  This  chapter  may  well  close  with  a 
passage  from  the  manuscript  diaries  of  William 
Ellery,  now  lying  before  me: 

"On  the  glorious  Fourth  of  July  [1778],  I  celebrated  in 
the  City  Tavern,  with  my  brother  delegates  of  Congress  and 
a  number  of  other  gentlemen,  amounting,  in  the  whole,  to 
about  eighty,  the  anniversary  of  Independency.  The  en- 
tertainment was  elegant  and  well  conducted.  There  were 
four  tables  spread;  two  of  them  extended  the  whole  length 
of  the  room,  the  other  two  crossed  them  at  right  angles. 
At  the  end  of  the  room,  opposite  the  upper  table,  was  erect- 
ed an  Orchestra.  At  the  head  of  the  upper  table,  and  at 
the  President's  right  hand,  stood  a  large  baked  pudding,  in 

268 


THE    DECLARATION 

the  centre  of  which  was  planted  a  staff,  on  which  was  dis- 
played a  crimson  flag,  in  the  midst  of  which  was  this  em- 
blematic device:  An  eye,  denoting  Providence;  a  label,  on 
which  was  inscribed,  '  An  appeal  to  Heaven ' ;  a  man  with  a 
drawn  sword  in  his  hand,  and  in  the  other  the  Declaration 
of  Independency,  and  at  his  feet  a  scroll  inscribed,  'The 
declaratory  acts.'  As  soon  as  the  dinner  began,  the  music, 
consisting  of  clarionets,  hautboys,  French  horns,  violins, 
and  bass-viols,  opened  and  continued,  making  proper  pauses, 
until  it  was  finished.  Then  the  toasts,  followed  by  a  dis- 
charge of  field  -  pieces,  were  drank,  and  so  the  afternoon 
ended.  In  the  evening  there  was  a  cold  collation  and  a 
brilliant  exhibition  of  fireworks.  The  street  was  crowded 
with  people  during  the  exhibition.  .  .  . 

"What  a  strange  vicissitude  in  human  affairs!  These,  but 
a  few  years  since  colonies  of  Great  Britain,  are  now  free, 
sovereign,  and  independent  States,  and  now  celebrate  the 
anniversary  of  their  independence  in  the  very  city  where, 
but  a  day  or  two  before,  General  Howe  exhibited  his  ridicu- 
lous Champhaitre." 


XII 

THE    BIRTH    OF    A    NATION 

MY  lords,"  said  the  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph's,  in  the 
British  House  of  Lords,  "I  look  upon  North 
America  as  the  only  great  nursery  of  freedom  left 
upon  the  face  of  the m  earth."  It  is  the  growth  of 
freedom  in  this  nursery  which  really  interests  us  most 
in  the  Revolutionary  period ;  all  the  details  of  battles 
are  quite  secondary.  Indeed,  in  any  general  view  of 
the  history  of  a  nation,  the  steps  by  which  it  gets  into 
a  war  and  finally  gets  out  again  are  of  more  impor- 
tance than  all  that  lies  between.  No  doubt  every 
skirmish  in  a  prolonged  contest  has  its  bearing  on 
national  character,  but  it  were  to  consider  too  cu- 
riously to  dwell  on  this,  and  most  of  the  continuous 
incident  of  a  war  belongs  simply  to  military  history. 
If  this  is  always  the  case,  it  is  peculiarly  true  of  the 
war  of  American  independence,  which  exhibited,  as 
was  said  by  the  ardent  young  Frenchman  Lafayette, 
"the  grandest  of  causes  won  by  contests  of  sentinels 
and  outposts." 

The  Declaration  of  Independence  was  publicly  read 
throughout  the  colonies,  and  was  communicated  by 
Washington  in  a  general  order,  July  9,  1776,  with  the 
following  announcement : ' '  The  general  hopes  this  im- 
portant event  will  serve  as  an  incentive  to  every 
officer  and  soldier  to  act  with  fidelity  and  courage,  as 

270 


THE    BIRTH    OF    A    NATION 

knowing  that  now  the  peace  and  safety  of  his  coun- 
try depend  (under  God)  solely  on  the  success  of  our 
arms;  and  that  he  is  now  in  the  service  of  a  State 
possessed  of  sufficient  power  to  reward  his  merit  and 
advance  him  to  the  highest  honors  of  a  free  country." 
Thus  early  did  this  far-seeing  Virginian  give  his  al- 
legiance to  the  new  government  as  a  nation— term- 
ing it  "  a  State,"  "  a  free  country"  ;  not  an  agglomera- 
tion of  States  only,  or  a  temporary  league  of  free 
countries.  And  he  needed  for  his  encouragement  all 
the  strength  he  could  gain  from  this  new-born  loyalty. 

It  was  a  gloomy  and  arduous  year,  the  year  1776. 
The  first  duty  now  assigned  to  Washington  was  that 
of  sustaining  himself  on  Long  Island  and  guarding 
New  York.  Long  Island  was  the  scene  of  terrible 
disaster:  the  forces  under  Putnam  were  hemmed  in 
and  cut  to  pieces  (August  27th),  making  Greenwood 
Cemetery  a  scene  of  death  before  it  was  a  place  of 
burial.  In  this  fatal  battle  8000  Americans,  still  raw 
and  under  a  raw  commander  (Putnam),  were  opposed 
to  20,000  trained  Hessian  soldiers,  supported  by  a 
powerful  fleet.  Washington  decided  to  retreat  from 
Long  Island.  With  extraordinary  promptness  and 
energy  he  collected  in  a  few  hours,  from  a  range  of 
fourteen  miles,  a  sufficient  supply  of  boats — this  being 
done  in  such  secrecy  that  even  his  aides  did  not  know 
it.  For  forty-eight  hours  he  did  not  sleep,  being  near- 
ly the  whole  time  in  the  saddle.  He  sent  9000  men, 
with  all  their  baggage  and  field  artillery,  across  a 
rapid  river  nearly  a  mile  wide,  within  hearing  of  the 
enemy's  camp:  "the  best-conducted  retreat  I  ever 
read  of,"  wrote  General  Greene.  Then  began  de- 
sertions,   by   companies   and   almost   by   regiments. 

271 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

They  continued  during  all  his  memorable  retreat 
through  the  Jerseys,  when  his  troops  were  barefooted 
and  disheartened,  and  yet  he  contested  every  inch  of 
ground.  At  the  beginning  of  his  march  he  heard  of 
the  loss  of  Fort  Washington  (November  16th)  with 
2600  men,  their  ordnance,  ammunition,  and  stores. 
The  day  before  he  crossed  the  Delaware  the  British 
took  possession  of  Newport,  Rhode  Island,  signalling 
their  arrival  by  burning  the  house  of  William  Ellery, 
who  had  signed  the  great  Declaration. 

Yet  amid  all  these  accumulated  disasters  Washing- 
ton wrote  to  Congress  that  he  could  see  ' '  without  de- 
spondency even  for  a  moment"  what  America  called 
her  "gloomy  hours."  He  could  breathe  more  freely 
at  last  when,  on  December  8th,  he  crossed  the  Dela- 
ware at  Trenton  with  what  the  discouraged  Reed  had 
called  "the  wretched  fragments  of  a  broken  army," 
now  diminished  to  3000  men.  As  his  last  boat  cross- 
ed, the  advanced  guard  of  Howe's  army  reached  the 
river  and  looked  eagerly  for  means  of  transportation. 
Washington  had  seized  everything  that  could  float 
upon  the  water  within  seventy  miles. 

On  December  20,  1776,  Washington  told  John  Han- 
cock, then  President  of  the  Congress,  ' '  Ten  days  more 
will  put  an  end  to  the  existence  of  our  army."  Yet 
at  Christmas  he  surprised  the  Hessians  at  Trenton, 
recrossing  the  river  and  returning  on  his  course  with 
what  was  perhaps  the  most  brilliant  single  stroke  of 
war  that  he  ever  achieved.  A  few  days  later  (Jan- 
uary 3,  1777)  he  defeated  Cornwallis  at  Princeton  with 
almost  equal  ability ;  and  all  this  he  did  with  but  5000 
men,  one-half  militia,  the  rest  little  better.  During 
that  year  there  had  been  in  service  47,000  "Conti- 
nentals" and  27,000  militia.     Where  were  they  all? 

272 


THE    BIRTH    OF    A    NATION 

These  large  figures  had  only  been  obtained  through 
that  system  of  short  enlistments  against  which  Wash- 
ington had  in  vain  protested— enlistments  for  three 
months,  or  even  for  one  month.  It  is  useless  for  this 
generation  to  exclaim  against  what  may  seem  slow- 
ness or  imbecility  in  the  government  of  that  day. 
Why,  we  ask,  did  they  not  foresee  what  the  war  would 
be? — why  did  they  not  insist  on  longer  enlistments? 
We  have  seen  in  our  own  time  the  uselessness  of  these 
questionings.  Under  popular  institutions  it  is  hard  to 
convince  a  nation  that  a  long  war  is  before  it ;  it  is 
apt  to  be  easily  persuaded  that  peace  will  return  in 
about  sixty  days ;  its  strength  is  seen,  if  at  all,  in  its 
reserved  power  and  its  final  resources.  The  dawn  of 
independence  seemed  overcast  indeed  when  the  cam- 
paign of  1776  closed,  and  Washington,  with  only 
three  or  four  thousand  men,  went  sadly  into  winter- 
quarters  at  Morristown. 

In  April,  1777,  John  Adams  wrote  proudly  to  his 
wife,  "Two  complete  years  we  have  maintained  open 
war  with  Great  Britain  and  her  allies,  and,  after  all 
our  difficulties  and  misfortunes,  are  much  abler  to 
cope  with  them  now  than  we  were  at  the  beginning." 
The  year  that  followed  was  in  many  respects  the 
turning-point  of  the  Revolution.  The  British  had 
formed  a  plan  which,  had  it  been  carried  out,  might 
have  resulted  in  a  complete  triumph  for  them.  It 
was  a  project  to  take  thorough  possession  of  the  whole 
line  of  the  Hudson— Burgoyne  coming  down  from  the 
north,  Howe  going  up  from  the  south  — thus  abso- 
lutely cutting  the  colonies  in  two,  separating  New 
Efl£land  from  the  rest  and  conquering  each  by  it- 
self. Happily  this  was  abandoned  for  a  measure  that 
had  no  valuable  results,  the  possession  of  Philadel- 

273 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

phia.  It  is  true  that  in  the  effort  to  save  that  city 
Washington  sustained  defeat  at  Brandywine  (Sep- 
tember ii,  1777),  and  only  came  near  victory,  with- 
out achieving  it,  at  Germantown  (October  4th).  But 
the  occupation  of  Philadelphia  divided  the  British 
army — now  nearly  fifty  thousand  soldiers — while  the 
American  army,  though  it  had  shrunk  to  about  half 
that  number,  remained  more  concentrated.  More- 
over, the  comfortable  winter  in  Philadelphia  did  the 
invading  troops  little  good;  while  the  terrible  winter 
at  Valley  Forge  was  in  one  sense  the  saving  of  the 
Americans.  There  they  came  under  the  influence  of 
trained  foreign  officers — Pulaski  and  Steuben,  as  well 
as  the  young  Lafayette.  Baron  Steuben  especially 
took  the  hungry  soldiers  and  taught  them  what  drill 
meant.  Heretofore  there  had  been  a  different  drill 
for  almost  every  regiment — a  whole  regiment  num- 
bering sometimes  but  thirty  men — and  many  of  these 
retained  the  practice,  learned  in  Indian  warfare,  of 
marching  in  single  file. 

Meanwhile  at  the  north  there  occurred  successes 
for  the  American  army,  which  grew  directly  out  of  the 
abandonment  of  the  British  plan.  Stark  with  New 
England  troops  defeated  a  detachment  of  Burgoyne's 
army  near  Bennington;  and  Gates  took  the  whole  of 
that  army — five  thousand  men — prisoners  at  Sara- 
toga, October  17,  1777.  It  seemed  for  the  moment 
that  this  determined  the  fate  of  the  war.  That  sur- 
render is  the  only  American  battle  included  by  Sir 
Edward  Creasy  in  his  Fifteen  Decisive  Battles  of  the 
World,  and  yet  for  six  years  its  decisiveness  did  not 
prove  final  and  the  war  went  on.  Those  who  remem- 
ber the  sort  of  subdued  and  sullen  hopefulness  which 
prevailed,   year   in    and   year   out,   in   the   northern 

274 


THE    BIRTH    OF    A    NATION 

States  during  the  late  war  for  the  Union,  can  prob- 
ably conceive  something  of  the  mood  in  which  the 
American  people  saw  months  and  years  go  by  during 
the  Revolution  without  any  very  marked  progress, 
and  yet  with  an  indestructible  feeling  that  somehow 
the.  end  must  come.  But  the  surrender  of  Burgoyne 
at  least  turned  the  scale  in  favor  of  the  Americans, 
so  far  as  the  judgment  of  Europe  was  concerned. 
When  the  French  minister,  Vergennes,  declared  that 
"all  efforts,  however  great,  would  be  powerless  to 
reduce  a  people  so  thoroughly  determined  to  refuse 
submission,"  the  alliance  was  a. foregone  conclusion. 
Dr.  Franklin,  with  inexhaustible  and  wily  good- 
nature, was  always  pressing  upon  the  French  minis- 
try this  same  view,  and  the  influence  of  Lafayette 
seconded  it.  Nations  like  to  form  alliances  on  the 
side  that  seems  to  be  winning.  Yet  not  even  the 
French  government  wished  to  have  the  new  nation 
too  powerful ;  and  John  Jay  has  conclusively  shown 
that  Vergennes  would  have  left  the  United  States 
a  very  hampered  and  restricted  nationality  had 
not  the  vigor  of  Jay,  well  seconded  by  Adams, 
added,  at  a  later  period,  an  element  of  positive  self- 
assertion  beyond  the  good-nature  of  Franklin.  Mean- 
while, the  first  treaty  with  France — which  was  also 
the  first  treaty  of  the  United  States  with  any  for- 
eign government — was  signed  February  6,  1778,  two 
months  after  the  news  of  Burgoyne's  surrender  had 
reached  Paris. 

However  high  we  rate  the  value  of  the  French  help, 
we  must  remember  that  the  alliance  united  England 
against  the  two  nations.  There  were  many  who 
were  by  this  time  convinced  that  the  work  of  con- 
quest was  hopeless.     "The  time  may  come,"    said 

275 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  King  to  Lord  North,  in  1778,  "when  it  will  be 
wise  to  abandon  all  North  America  but  Canada, 
Nova  Scotia,  and  the  Floridas ;  but  then  the  general- 
ity of  the  nation  must  first  see  it  in  that  light."  If 
there  is  anything  that  is  impressed  upon  the  very 
school-books  in  connection  with  that  period  it  is  the 
obstinacy  of  King  George  III.,  and  yet  he  had  learned 
thus  much.  On  the  other  hand,  Lord  Chatham,  who 
had  once  said,  "America  has  resisted;  I  rejoice,  my 
lords,"  was  now  driven  by  the  French  alliance  to 
take  sides  against  America.  He  saw  in  the  proposed 
independence  only  the  degradation  of  the  power  of 
England  before  the  French  throne,  and  was  carried 
from  a  sick-bed  to  speak  against  it  in  Parliament 
(April  7,  1778).  "  My  lords,"  he  said,  "  I  rejoice  that 
the  grave  has  not  closed  upon  me,  that  I  am  still 
alive  to  uplift  my  voice  against  the  dismemberment 
of  this  ancient  and  most  noble  monarchy."  As  the 
Duke  of  Richmond  essayed  to  answer,  Chatham  was 
seized  with  apoplexy  and  was  borne  from  the  house 
to  die.  The  young  American  government  had  gained 
a  powerful  alliance,  but  it  had  lost  its  best  English 
friend.  Richmond,  Burke,  and  Fox  supported  its 
cause,  but  Chatham  had  roused  the  traditional  pride 
of  England  against  France,  and  Lord  North  was  his 
successor.  Then  followed  a  period  of  which  Wash- 
ington wrote  to  George  Mason  (March  27,  1779)  that 
he  was  for  the  first  time  despondent,  and  had  beheld 
no  day  in  which  he  thought  the  liberties  of  America 
so  endangered.  The  war  must  still  go  on,  and  the 
French  army  and  navy  must  cross  the  Atlantic  for 
its  prosecution.  They  were  cordially  welcomed  by 
everybody  except  the  German  settlers  of  New  York 
and   Pennsylvania,   who  could  not  forget,   as   Mrs. 

276 


THE    BIRTH    OF    A    NATION 

Quincy's  journal  tells  us,  the  excesses  committed  by 
the  French  troops  in  Germany. 

The  direct  service  done  by  the  French  alliance  was 
of  less  value  than  the  moral  support  it  brought.  The 
French  occupied  Newport,  Rhode  Island,  in  July,  1 780, 
with  nearly  six  thousand  men  in  army  and  navy.  The 
unpublished  memorials  of  that  time  and  place  con- 
tain many  delightful  recollections  of  the  charming 
manners  of  the  French  officers :  of  the  Rochambeaux, 
father  and  son ;  of  the  Due  de  Deux-Ponts,  afterwards 
King  of  Bavaria ;  of  the  Prince  de  Broglie,  guillotined 
in  the  Revolution;  of  the  Swedish  Count  Fersen, 
"the  Adonis  of  the  camp,"  who  afterwards  acted  as 
coachman  for  the  French  king  and  queen  in  their 
escape  from  Paris ;  of  the  Vicomte  de  Noailles  and  of 
Admiral  de  Ternay,  the  latter  buried  in  Trinity 
Church  yard  in  Newport.  There  are  old  houses  in 
that  city  which  still  retain  upon  their  window-panes 
the  gallant  inscriptions  of  those  picturesque  days,  and 
there  are  old  letters  and  manuscripts  that  portray 
their  glories.  One  that  lies  before  me  describes  the 
young  noblemen  driving  into  the  country  upon  par- 
ties of  pleasure,  preceded  by  their  running  footmen — 
a  survival  of  feudalism — tall  youths  in  kid  slippers 
and  with  leaping  poles;  another  describes  the  recep- 
tion of  Washington  by  the  whole  French  garrison,  in 
March,  1781.  It  was  a  brilliant  scene.  The  four 
French  regiments  were  known  as  Bourbonnais,  Sois- 
sonnais,  Deux-Ponts,  and  Saintonge;  they  contained 
each  a  thousand  men;  and  the  cavalry  troop,  under 
De  Lauzun,  was  almost  as  large.  Some  of  these  wore 
white  uniforms,  with  yellow  or  violet  or  crimson  lapels, 
and  with  black  gaiters ;  others  had  a  uniform  of  black 
and  gold,  with  gaiters  of  snowy  white.     The  officers 

277 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

displayed  stars  and  badges ;  even  the  officers'  servants 
were  gay  in  gold  and  silver  lace.  Over  them  all  and 
over  the  whole  town  floated  the  white  flag  of  the 
Bourbons  with  the  fleurs-de-lis.  They  were  drawn  up 
in  open  ranks  along  the  avenue  leading  to  the  long 
wharf,  which  was  just  then  losing  its  picturesque  old 
name,  Queen's  Hithe.  This  gay  army,  whose  fresh 
uniforms  and  appointments  contrasted  strangely  with 
the  worn  and  dilapidated  aspect  of  the  Continental 
troops,  received  Washington  with  the  honors  due  to 
a  marshal  of  France.  In  the  evening  a  ball  was  given 
to  the  American  generals;  Washington  opened  the 
dance  with  the  beautiful  Miss  Champlin :  he  chose  for 
the  figure  the  country-dance  known  as  "A  Successful 
Campaign,"  and,  as  he  danced,  the  French  officers 
took  the  instruments  from  the  musicians  and  them- 
selves played  the  air  and  accompaniment.  Thus  with 
characteristic  graces  began  the  French  occupation  of 
Newport,  and  it  continued  to  be  for  them  rather  a 
holiday  campaign,  until  the  siege  of  Yorktown,  Vir- 
ginia, proved  the  qualities  of  their  engineers  and  their 
soldiers.  After  ten  days  of  siege,  the  British  army, 
overwhelmed  and  surrounded,  had  to  surrender  at 
last  (October  19,  1781);  and  in  the  great  painting 
which  represents  the  scene,  at  the  Versailles  palace, 
General  de  Rochambeau  is  made  the  conspicuous  fig- 
ure, while  Washington  is  quite  secondary. 

Meanwhile  the  successes  of  Paul  Jones  in  sea-fight- 
ing gained  still  more  the  respect  of  Europe,  and  his 
victorious  fight  of  three  hours  in  the  Bon  Homme 
Richard  against  the  Serapis  (1779) — the  two  ships 
being  lashed  side  by  side — was  the  earliest  naval 
victory  gained  under  the  present  American  flag, 
which  this  bold  sea-captain  was  the  first  to  unfurl. 

278 


THE    BIRTH    OF    A    NATION 

Then  the  skilful  campaigns  of  General  Nathanael 
Greene  (1780)  rescued  the  Carolinas  from  invasion; 
and  the  treason  of  Benedict  Arnold,  with  his  plan  for 
surrendering  to  the  British  the  "  American  Gibraltar" 
— West  Point — created  a  public  excitement  only 
deepened  by  the  melancholy  death  of  Major  Andre, 
who  was  hanged  as  a  spy,  September  23,  1780.  For 
nearly  two  years  after  the  surrender  of  Cornwallis  the 
British  troops  held  the  cities  of  New  York,  Charleston, 
and  Savannah;  and  though  they  were  powerless  be- 
yond those  cities,  yet  it  seemed  to  their  garrisons,  no 
doubt,  that  the  war  was  not  yet  ended.  Mrs.  Josiah 
Quincy,  visiting  New  York  as  a  child,  just  before  its 
evacuation  by  the  British  under  Sir  Guy  Carleton,  in 
1783,  says  that  she  accompanied  her  mother,  Mrs. 
Morton,  to  call  on  the  wife  of  Chief -justice  Smith,  an 
eminent  loyalist.  Their  hostess  brought  in  a  little 
girl,  and  said,  "This  child  has  been  born  since  the 
Rebellion."  "Since  the  Revolution?"  replied  Mrs. 
Morton.  Mrs.  Smith  smiled,  and  said,  good-natured- 
ly, "  Well,  well,  Mrs.  Morton,  this  is  only  a  truce,  not 
a  peace;  and  we  shall  be  back  again  in  full  posses- 
sion in  two  years."  "This  prophecy  happily  did  not 
prove  true,"  adds  Mrs.  Quincy,  with  exultant  pa- 
triotism . 

Independence  was  essentially  secured  by  the  pre- 
liminary articles  signed  in  Paris  on  November  30, 
1782,  although  the  final  treaty  was  not  signed  till 
September  3,  1783.  It  was  on  April  18,  1783,  that 
Washington  issued  his  order  for  the  cessation  of  hos- 
tilities, thus  completing,  as  he  said,  the  eighth  year 
of  the  war.  The  army  was  disbanded  November  3d. 
The  whole  number  of ' '  Continentals, ' '  or  regular  troops, 
employed  during  the  contest  was  231,791.     Of  these 

279 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Massachusetts  had  furnished  67,907,  Connecticut 
31,939,  Virginia  26,678,  Pennsylvania  25,678,  and  the 
other  States  smaller  numbers,  down  to  2679  from 
Georgia.  The  expenditures  of  the  war,  as  officially 
estimated  in  1790,  were  nearly  a  hundred  million  dol- 
lars in  specie  ($92,485,693.15),  and  the  debts,  foreign 
expenditures,  etc.,  swelled  this  to  more  than  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty-five  millions  ($135,693,703).  At  the 
close,  the  army,  which  had  been  again  and  again  on 
the  verge  of  mutiny  from  neglect  and  privation,  re- 
ceived pay  for  three  months  in  six  months'  notes, 
which  commanded  in  the  market  the  price  of  two 
shillings  for  twenty  shillings.  The  soldiers  reached 
their  homes,  as  Washington  wrote  to  Congress,  "  with- 
out a  settlement  of  their  accounts,  and  without  a 
farthing  of  money  in  their  pockets." 

Independence  being  thus  achieved,  what  was  to  be 
done  with  it  ?  Those  who  represented  the  nation  in 
Congress,  while  generally  agreed  in  patriotic  feeling, 
were  not  agreed  even  on  the  fundamental  principles 
of  government.  The  Swiss  Zubly,  who  represented 
Georgia,  and  who  claimed  to  have  been  familiar  with 
republican  government  ever  since  he  was  six  years 
old,  declared  that  it  was  "  little  better  than  a  govern- 
ment of  devils."  John  Adams  heartily  favored  what 
he  called  republican  government,  but  we  know,  from 
a  letter  of  his  to  Samuel  Adams  (October  18,  1790), 
that  he  meant  by  it  something  very  remote  from  our 
present  meaning.  Like  many  other  men  of  modest 
origin,  he  had  a  strong  love  for  social  distinctions;  he 
noted  with  satisfaction  that  there  was  already  the 
semblance.of  an  aristocracy  in  Boston;  and  he,  more- 
over, held  that  the  republican  forms  of  Poland  and 
Venice  were  worse,  and  the  Dutch  and  Swiss  republics 

280 


THE    UNITED    STATES,    1783 
Showing  Claims  of  the  States 


THE    BIRTH    OF    A    NATION 

• 
but  little  better,  than  the  old  regime  in  France,  whose 

abuses  led  to  the  Revolution.  The  republic  of  Mil- 
ton, he  thought,  would  imply  "miseries,"  and  the 
simple  monarchical  form  would  be  better.  He  meant 
by  republic,  he  said,  simply  a  government  in  which 
"the  people  have  collectively  or  by  representation  an 
essential  share  in  the  sovereignty" — such  a  share, 
for  instance,  as  they  have  in  England.  This  being 
the  case,  it  is  not  strange  that  he  should  have  regard- 
ed independence  itself  as  but  a  temporary  measure, 
a  sort  of  protest,  and  should  have  looked  forward 
without  dismay  to  an  ultimate  reunion  with  England, 
under  certain  guarantees  to  be  secured  by  treaty. 

It  is  very  fortunate  that  the  institutions  of  Ameri- 
ca were  not  to  depend  on  the  speculations  of  any  one 
man,  even  the  wisest.  Many  persons  think  of  the 
organization  of  the  United  States  as  being  the  work 
of  a  few  leaders.  Had  this  been  the  truth,  the  Con- 
tinental government  would  have  been  organized  first, 
and  the  State  governments  would  have  been  built 
afterwards  on  its  model.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was 
just  the  other  way.  While  the  great  leaders  were 
debating  in  Congress  or  negotiating  in  Europe,  the 
question  of  government  was  settled  by  the  reorgani- 
zation of  successive  colonies  into  commonwealths, 
the  work  being  done  largely  by  men  now  forgotten. 
These  men  took  the  English  tradition  of  local  self- 
government,  adapted  it  to  the  new  situation,  and 
adjusted  it  to  a  community  in  which  kings  and  noble- 
men had  already  begun  to  fade  into  insignificance. 

Even  before  independence  was  declared,  some  of 
the  colonies — Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire,  South 
Carolina,  Virginia,  and  New  Jersey — had  begun  to 
frame  State  governments  on  the  basis  of  the  old  char- 

281 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

ter  governments,  but  so  hastily  that  their  work  need- 
ed in  some  cases  to  be  revised.  After  the  Declaration, 
New  York  and  Maryland  followed  soon,  and  then  the 
rest.  We  find  Jefferson  writing  to  Franklin  (Au- 
gust 13,  1777)  that  in  Virginia  "the  people  seem  to 
have  laid  aside  the  monarchical  and  taken  up  the 
republican  government  with  as  much  ease  as  would 
have  attended  their  throwing  off  an  old  and  putting 
on  a  new  suit  of  clothes."  All  these  commonwealths 
agreed,  almost  without  consultation,  on  certain  prin- 
ciples. All  recognized  the  sovereignty  of  the  people,  or 
at  least  of  the  masculine  half  of  the  people ;  all  wished 
to  separate  Church  and  State;  all  distinguished,  as 
did  the  unwritten  constitution  of  England,  between 
the  executive,  the  judicial,  and  the  legislative  depart- 
ments; all  limited  the  executive  department  very 
carefully,  as  experience  had  taught  them  to  do.  No- 
where, except  in  Rhode  Island  and  Pennsylvania, 
was  there  any  recognition  of  the  hereditary  right  to 
vote,  this  being  in  Rhode  Island  included  in  the 
royal  charter  under  which  that  State  governed  itself, 
omitting  only  the  part  of  royalty,  till  1842.  In  short, 
all  the  scattered  colonies  shifted  what  had  seemed 
the  very  basis  of  their  structure,  and  yet  found  them- 
selves, after  all,  in  good  condition.  We  have  grown 
accustomed  in  these  days  to  the  readiness  with  which 
English-speaking  men  can  settle  down  anywhere  on 
the  planet  and  presently  organize  free  institutions; 
so  that  we  hardly  recognize  what  a  wonder  it  seemed 
that  thirteen  colonies,  even  while  engaged  in  a  great 
war,  should  one  by  one  quietly  crystallize  into  shape. 
The  great  difficulty  was  to  unite  these  little  com- 
monwealths into  a  nation.  It  took  one  unsuccessful 
experiment  to  teach  the  way  of  success,  and  it  is  as- 

282 


THE    BIRTH    OF    A    NATION 

tonishing  that  it  did  not  take  a  dozen.  It  was  a 
strange  period.  The  war  had  unsettled  men's  minds, 
as  is  done  by  all  great  wars.  It  had  annihilated  all 
loyalty  to  the  king,  but  it  had  done  much  more  than 
this.  It  had  made  the  rich  poor  and  the  poor  rich ; 
had  filled  the  nation  with  irredeemable  paper-money ; 
had  created  a  large  class  whose  only  hope  was  to 
evade  payment  of  their  debts.  "Oh,  Mr.  Adams," 
said  John  Adams's  horse-jockey  client,  "what  great 
things  have  you  and  your  colleagues  done  for  us! 
We  can  never  be  grateful  enough  to  you.  There  are 
no  courts  of  justice  now  in  this  province,  and  I  hope 
there  never  will  be  another." 

The  first  experiment  at  nationl  union  was  the  Con- 
federation. It  was  based  essentially  on  a  theory  of 
Jefferson's,  although  Jefferson,  having  retired  from 
the  Congress,  was  not  responsible  for  the  form  of 
union  agreed  upon.  The  theory  was  to  make  "the 
States  one  as  to  everything  connected  with  foreign  na- 
tions and  several  as  to  everything  purely  domestic." 
For  purposes  of  foreign  commerce  a  confederation 
must  exist.  To  this  all  finally  agreed,  though  with 
much  reluctance.  Indeed,  the  original  apostles  of  this 
theory  did  not  much  believe  in  any  such  commerce. 
Jefferson  wrote  from  Paris  (in  1785)  that  if  he  had  his 
way  "  the  States  should  practise  neither  commerce  nor 
navigation,"  but  should  "stand  with  respect  to  Eu- 
rope precisely  on  the  footing  of  China."  But  he  ad- 
mitted that  he  could  not  have  his  way,  and  wrote  to 
Monroe  (December  11,  1785)  from  Paris:  "On  this 
side  of  the  Atlantic  we  are  viewed  as  objects  of  com- 
merce only."  Granting  thus  much,  then,  to  be  in- 
evitable, how  was  little  Rhode  Island  or  Delaware  to 
resist  the  aggressions  of  any  European  bully,  or  of 

283 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

those  Algerine  or  Tripolitan  pirates  who  then  bullied 
even  the  bullies  themselves?  For  this  purpose,  at 
least,  there  must  be  some  joint  action.  How  could 
the  United  States  treat  with  any  foreign  govern- 
ment when,  as  Washington  said  (in  1785),  they  were 
"  one  nation  to-day  and  thirteen  to-morrow  "  ?  They 
must,  therefore,  unite  sufficiently  to  make  a  treaty 
and  enforce  it,  but  no  further.  In  other  words,  they 
undertook  to  build  a  house  which  should  have  an 
outside  but  no  inside. 

The  Confederation  was  originally  put  in  shape 
through  a  committee  appointed  by  Congress,  June  11, 
1776,  "to  prepare  and  digest  the  form  of  a  confedera- 
tion to  be  entered  into  between  these  colonies."  But 
the  " articles"  thus  prepared  were  not  accepted  by 
Congress  till  November  15,  1777,  and  they  had  been 
much  modified  before  they  received  the  assent  of  the 
last  of  the  States,  on  March  1,  1781.  During  all  this 
time  the  affairs  of  the  war  were  carried  on  loosely 
enough  by  Congress — still  a  single  House — which  had 
come  to  be  familiarly  known  among  the  people  as 
"King  Cong."  But  this  king  had  absolutely  no 
power  save  in  the  impulsive  support  of  the  people.  It 
was  a  thankless  office  to  sit  in  Congress ;  the  best  men 
were  more  and  more  reluctant  to  serve  there.  To 
reach  it,  wherever  it  sat — Philadelphia,  Baltimore, 
Lancaster,  York,  Princeton,  or  Annapolis — was  to 
most  of  the  members  far  more  of  a  journey  than  to 
reach  San  Francisco  or  London  from  Philadelphia  or 
Annapolis  to-day.  Inasmuch  as  all  votes  were  taken 
by  States — and  every  State  had  an  equal  vote,  so 
long  as  there  was  one  man  to  represent  it — there 
was  a  strong  temptation  for  delegates  to  absent  them- 
selves ;  and  a  single  member  from  Delaware  or  Rhode 

284 


THE    BIRTH    OF    A    NATION 

Island  could,  if  present,  balance  the  whole  represen- 
tation from  New  York  or  Virginia.  "  It  is  enough  to 
sicken  one,"  wrote  General  Knox  to  Washington,  in 
March,  1783,  "to  observe  how  light  a  matter  many 
States  make  of  their  not  being  represented  in  Con- 
gress— a  good  proof  of  the  badness  of  the  present 
Constitution."  Even  on  the  great  occasion  when  the 
resignation  of  Washington  was  to  be  received,  there 
were  present  only  twenty  members,  representing  but 
seven  of  the  colonies.  "It  is  difficult,"  wrote  M. 
Otto  to  the  French  government,  "to  assemble  seven 
States,  which  form  the  number  required  to  transact 
the  least  important  business";  and  he  wrote  again,  a 
few  months  after,  that  the  secret  of  the  predominant 
influence  of  Massachusetts  in  the  Congress  was  that 
she  usually  kept  four  or  five  able  delegates  there, 
while  other  States  rarely  had  two.  As  we  read  the 
records  we  can  only  wonder  that  the  organization  did 
its  work  so  well;  and  it  is  not  at  all  strange  that,  as 
the  same  General  Knox  wrote  to  Washington,  the 
favorite  toasts  in  the  army  were,  "Cement  to  the 
Union"  and  "A  hoop  to  the  barrel." 

There  were  those  who  believed  that  nothing  but 
the  actual  necessities  of  another  war  could  really  unite 
the  colonies,  and  some  patriots  frankly  wished  for 
that  calamity.  M.  Otto,  writing  home  in  December, 
1785,  to  M.  de  Vergennes,  declared  that  Mr.  Jay 
was  the  most  influential  man  in  Congress,  and  that 
Mr.  Jay  had  lately  expressed  in  his  hearing  a  wish 
that  the  Algerine  pirates,  then  so  formidable,  would 
burn  some  of  the  maritime  towns  of  the  United  States, 
in  order  to  reunite  the  nation  and  call  back  the  old 
feeling.  "The  majority  of  Congress  perceive  very 
clearly,"  he  wrote,  "that  war  would  serve  as  a  bond 

285 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    S  T  A  T  E  S 

to  the  Confederation,  but  they  cannot  conceal  the 
lack  of  means  which  they  possess  to  carry  it  on  with 
advantage." 

This  desperate  remedy  being  out  of  the  question, 
the  "hoop  to  the  barrel"  must  be  put  on  by  some 
more  peaceful  method.  Yet  each  way  had  its  own 
perplexities.  There  were  jealousies  of  long  standing 
between  North  and  South,  between  the  colonies 
which  were  ready  to  abolish  slavery  and  those  which 
clung  to  it.  Then  the  course  of  the  Confederation  had 
only  increased  the  mutual  distrust  between  the  small 
and  the  large  States.  There  were  objections  to  a 
permanent  President ;  some  would  have  preferred,  as 
a  very  few  would  still  prefer,  to  have  a  system  like 
that  now  prevailing  in  the  Swiss  Confederation,  and 
to  place  at  the  head  merely  the  chairman  of  a  com- 
mittee. Again,  there  existed  a  variety  of  opinions 
as  to  a  legislature  of  one  or  two  Houses.  It  is  said 
that  when  Jefferson  returned  from  France  he  was 
breakfasting  with  Washington,  and  asked  him  why 
he  agreed  to  a  Senate. 

"  Why,"  said  Washington,  "  did  you  just  now  pour 
that  coffee  into  your  saucer  before  drinking  it?" 
"To  cool  it,"  said  Jefferson;  "my  throat  is  not  made 
of  brass."  "Even  so,"  said  Washington,  "we  pour 
our  legislation  into  the  Senatorial  saucer  to  cool  it." 

Franklin,  like  Jefferson,  approved  only  of  the  single 
chamber  of  deputies,  and  it  has  been  thought  that  to 
his  great  influence  in  France,  leading  to  the  adoption 
of  that  method,  were  due  some  of  the  excesses  of  the 
French  Revolution.  The  States  of  Pennsylvania  and 
Georgia  had,  during  the  Confederation,  but  one  legis- 
lative body ;  the  Confederation  itself  had  but  one,  and 
the  great  State  of  New  York  voted  in  the  conven- 

286 


PATRICK    HENRY 


THE    BIRTH    OF    A    NATION 

tion  of  1787  against  having  more  than  one.  Some  of 
the  most  enlightened  European  reformers  —  Mazzini, 
Louis  Blanc,  John  Stuart  Mill,  even  Gold  win  Smith — 
have  always  believed  the  second  House  to  be  a  source 
of  weakness  in  American  institutions,  while  the  general 
feeling  of  Americans  is  overwhelmingly  in  its  favor. 
Yet  its  mere  existence  is  a  type  of  that  combination 
which  is  at  the  foundation  of  the  national  govern- 
ment. If  Patrick  Henry  was  right,  if  he  had  wholly 
ceased  to  be  a  Virginian  in  becoming  an  American, 
then  there  should  be  no  separate  representation  of 
the  States.  If  Jefferson  was  right — who  considered 
the  Union  only  a  temporary  device  to  carry  the  col- 
onies through  the  war  for  independence — then  the 
States  only  should  be  represented,  and  they  should 
weigh  equally,  whether  small  or  large.  But  Elbridge 
Gerry  included  both  statements  when  he  said:  "We 
are  neither  the  same  nation  nor  different  nations. 
We  ought  not,  therefore,  to  pursue  the  one  or  the 
other  of  these  ideas  too  closely."  This  statement  is 
regarded  by  Von  Hoist,  one  of  the  acutest  foreign 
critics  of  American  institutions  since  De  Tocqueville, 
as  containing  the  whole  secret  of  American  history. 
We  are  apt  to  suppose  that  the  sentiment  of  union 
among  the  colonies,  once  formed,  went  steadily  on 
increasing.  Not  at  all;  it  went,  like  all  other  things, 
by  action  and  reaction.  It  was  before  a  shot  was 
fired  that  Patrick  Henry  had  thrilled  the  people's 
ears  with  his  proud  assertion  of  nationality.  But  as  the 
war  went  on  the  "  people"  of  the  United  States  came 
again  to  be  loosely  described  as  the  "inhabitants" 
of  the  States.  The  separate  commonwealths  had  the 
organization,  the  power,  all  but  the  army,  and  one 
of  them,  North  Carolina,  went  so  far  as  to  plan  a 

287 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

fleet.  The  Confederation  was  only,  as  it  described 
itself,  "a  firm  league  of  friendship";  the  Continental 
government  was  once  actually  characterized  in  Mas- 
sachusetts as  a  foreign  power;  it  was  the  creation  of 
war's  necessities,  while  the  States  controlled  the  daily 
life.  Washington  had  to  complain  that  the  States 
were  too  much  engaged  in  their  "local  concerns," 
and  he  had  to  plead  for  the  "  great  business  of  a 
nation."  Fisher  Ames  wrote,  " Instead  of  feeling  as 
a  nation,  a  State  is  our  country."  So  far  as  the  in- 
fluence of  foreign  nations  went,  it  tended  only  to 
disintegrate,  not  to  unite.  Even  the  one  friendly 
government  of  Europe,  France,  had  no  interest  in 
promoting  union;  the  cabinet  at  Versailles  wrote 
to  its  minister  in  America  (August  30,  1787)  that  it 
would  not  regret  to  see  the  Confederation  broken  up, 
and  that  it  had  recognized  "no  other  object  than  to 
deprive  Great  Britain  of  that  vast  continent." 

In  short,  the  Confederation  waned  day  by  day ;  it 
had  no  power,  for  power  had  been  carefully  withheld 
from  it;  it  had  only  influence,  and,  as  Washington 
once  said,  "influence  is  not  government."  Fisher 
Ames  declared  that  "  the  corporation  of  a  college  or  a 
missionary  society  were  greater  potentates  than  Con- 
gress. .  .  .  The  government  of  a  great  nation  had 
barely  revenue  enough  to  buy  stationery  for  its  clerks 
or  to  pay  the  salary  of  the  door-keepers."  It  existed 
only  to  carry  on  the  war  as  it  best  could,  and  when 
the  war  ended  the  prestige  of  the  Confederation  was 
gone.  There  was  left  a  people  without  a  govern- 
ment, and  this  people  was  demoralized  amid  success, 
discontented  in  spite  of  its  triumph.  Washington 
thus  despairingly  summed  up  the  situation:  "From 
the  high  ground  we  stood  upon,  from  the  plain  path 

288 


THE    BIRTH    OF    A    NATION 

which  invited  our  footsteps,  to  be  so  fallen,  so  lost, 
is  really  mortifying;  but  virtue,  I  fear,  has  in  some 
degree  taken  its  departure  from  our  land,  and  the 
want  of  a  disposition  to  do  justice  is  the  source  of  our 
national  embarrassments. ' ' 

The  downfall  of  the  Confederation  was  greatly  aid- 
ed by  the  celebrated  insurrection  of  Daniel  Shays  in 
Massachusetts — an  occasion  when  armed  mobs  broke 
up  the  courts  and  interrupted  all  the  orderly  processes 
of  law.  This  body  numbered,  according  to  the  esti- 
mate of  General  Knox — who  went  to  Springfield  to 
provide  for  the  defence  of  the  arsenal  against  them 
— not  less  than  twelve  or  fifteen  thousand  men,  scat- 
tered through  the  New  England  States ;  and  he  esti- 
mated the  whole  force  of  their  friends  and  supporters 
at  two-sevenths  of  the  population.  The  grounds  of 
this  insurrection  were,  as  it  seems  to  me,  a  shade  more 
plausible,  and  hence  more  formidable  than  the  his- 
torians have  recognized.  As  stated  by  Knox,  these 
views  were  based  expressly  on  the  peculiar  state  of 
things  at  the  close  of  a  long  and  exhausting  war,  and 
amounted  simply  to  the  doctrine  that,  being  narrowly 
rescued  from  shipwreck,  the  whole  half -drowned  com- 
pany should  share  alike.  As  a  result  of  the  war,  they 
urged,  almost  everybody  was  bankrupt.  John 
Adams's  horse- jockey  client  was  really  no  worse  off 
than  the  most  sober  and  honest  mechanic.  Of  the 
few  who  had  any  money,  some  were  speculators  and 
contractors,  who  had  grown  rich  out  of  the  govern- 
ment ;  others  were  Tories  in  disguise,  who  had  saved 
their  property  from  a  just  confiscation.  All  this 
property,  having  been  saved  from  the  British  by  the 
sacrifices  of  all,  should  in  justice  be  shared  among 
all.     Yet  they  would  not  demand  so  much  as  that: 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

let  there  be  simply  a  remission  of  debts  and  a  further 
issue  of  paper-money. 

Audacious  as  this  proposition  now  seems,  it  was 
not  wholly  inconsistent  with  some  things  that  had 
gone  before  it.     If  Washington  himself  thought  it 
fitting  to  celebrate  the  surrender  of  Cornwallis  by  a 
general  release  of  prisoners  from  jail,  why  not  now 
carry  this  rejoicing  a  little  further,   and   have  an 
equally  general  release  of  those  who  were  on  their 
way  to  jail?     Thus  they  reasoned,   or  might  have 
reasoned ;  and  all  this  helps  us  to  understand  a  little 
better  why  it  was  that  Jefferson  did  not  share  the 
general  alarm  at  these  doctrines,  but,  on  the  whole, 
rather  approved  of  the  outbreak.     "  Can  history  pro- 
duce," he  said,  "an  instance  of  rebellion  so  honor- 
ably  conducted?"     "God  forbid  we   shall  ever  be 
without  such  a  rebellion!"     "A  little  rebellion  now 
and  then  is  a  good  thing."     "An  observation  of  this 
truth  should  render  republican  governors  so  mild  as 
not  to  discourage  them  too  much."     Yet  those  who 
were  on  the  spot  saw  in  this  rebellion  not  only  the 
weakness  of  the  general  government,  but  that  of  the 
separate  States  as  well.     "Not  only  is  State  against 
State,  and  all  against  the  Federal  head,"  wrote  Gen- 
eral Knox  to  Washington,   "but  the  States  within 
themselves  possess  the  name  only,  without  having  the 
essential  concomitants  of  government.   ...  On  the 
very  first  impression  of  faction  and  licentiousness, 
the  one  theoretic  government  of  Massachusetts  has 
given  •way." 

Even  before  this  insurrection,  a  convention,  at- 
tended by  five  States  only,  had  been  held  at  Annap- 
olis (September,  1786),  with  a  view  to  some  improved 
national  organization.     It  called  a  general  conven- 

290 


THE    BIRTH    OF    A    NATION 

tion,  which  met  at  Philadelphia,  having  barely  a 
quorum  of  States,  on  May  25,  1787.  There  the  dele- 
gates sat  amid  constant  interruptions  and  antago- 
nisms, the  majority  of  the  New  York  delegation  leav- 
ing once  under  protest,  South  Carolina  protesting, 
Elbridge  Gerry  predicting  failure,  and  Benjamin 
Franklin  despairingly  proposing  to  open  the  sessions 
thenceforward  with  prayer  as  the  last  remaining  hope. 
Then  the  Constitution  was  adopted  at  last — only  to 
come  into  new  and  more  heated  discussion  in  every 
State.  We  have  in  The  Federalist  the  great  defence 
of  it  by  Hamilton,  Madison,  and  Jay;  but  Patrick 
Henry  himself  turned  his  eloquence  against  it  in  Vir- 
ginia, and  Samuel  Adams  in  Massachusetts.  These 
were  two  very  powerful  opponents,  who  were  well 
entitled  to  a  voice ;  and  in  these  two  important  States 
the  Constitution  was  accepted  by  majorities  so  small 
that  the  change  of  a  dozen  votes  would  have  caused 
defeat.  In  the  New  York  convention  the  vote  stood 
30  to  27;  in  Rhode  Island,  34  to  32;  this  being  the 
last  State  to  ratify,  and  the  result  being  secured  by 
a  change  of  one  vote  under  the  instructions  of  a  town- 
meeting  in  the  little  village  of  Middletown.  By  a 
chance  thus  narrow  was  the  United  States  born  into 
a  nation.  The  contest,  as  Washington  wrote  to  Lee, 
was  "not  so  much  for  glory  as  existence." 

And  as  thus  finally  created  the  nation  was  neither 
English  nor  French,  but  American.  It  was  in  very 
essential  features  a  new  departure.  It  is  common  to 
say  that  the  French  Revolution  brought  with  it 
French  political  theories  in  the  United  States.  Ed- 
mund Burke  wrote  that  the  colonists  were  "not  only 
devoted  to  liberty,  but  to  liberty  according  to  Eng- 
lish ideas  and  on  English  principles,"  yet  there  is  a 

291 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

prevalent  impression  that  the  influence  of  France 
converted  this  English  feeling  into  a  French  habit  of 
mind,  and  that  the  desire  to  legislate  on  the  abstract 
rights  of  man  came  from  that  side  of  the  English 
Channel.  But  Jefferson  had  never  been  in  France, 
nor  under  any  strong  French  influence,  when  he,  as 
the  Rev.  Ezra  Stiles  said,  "  poured  the  soul  of  a  con- 
tinent into  the  monumental  Act  of  Independence"; 
and  Franklin  had  made  but  flying  visits  to  Paris 
when  he  wrote  in  England,  about  1770,  those  strik- 
ing sentences,  under  the  name  of  "Some  Good  Whig 
Principles,"  which  form  the  best  compendium  of 
what  is  called  Jeffersonian  Democracy;  "The  all  of 
one  man  is  as  dear  to  him  as  the  all  of  another,  and 
the  poor  man  has  an  equal  right,  but  more  need, 
to  have  representatives  in  the  legislature  than  the 
rich  one."  What  are  sometimes  reproachfully  called 
"transcendental  politics ' '—political  action,  that  is, 
based  on  an  abstract  theory — arose  spontaneously 
in  that  age ;  the  Constitution  was  based  on  them ;  and 
in  urging  them  America  probably  influenced  France 
more  than  France  affected  America. 

One  of  the  most  momentous  acts  of  the  Continental 
Congress  had  been  to  receive  from  the  State  of  Vir- 
ginia the  gift  of  a  vast  unsettled  territory  northwest 
of  the  Ohio,  and  to  apply  to  this  wide  realm  the  guar- 
antee of  freedom  from  slavery.  This  safeguard  was 
but  the  fulfilment  of  a  condition  suggested  by  Tim- 
othy Pickering,  when,  in  1783,  General  Rufus  Put- 
nam and  nearly  three  hundred  army  officers  had  pro- 
posed to  form  a  new  State  in  that  very  region  of 
the  Ohio.  They  sent  in  a  memorial  to  Congress  ask- 
ing for  a  grant  of  land.  Washington  heartily  en- 
dorsed  the  project,  but  nothing  came  of  it.     North 

292 


THE    BIRTH    OF    A    NATION 

Carolina  soon  after  made  a  cession  of  land  to  the 
United  States,  and  then  revoked  it ;  but  the  people 
of  the  ceded  territory  declared  themselves  for  a  time 
to  be  a  separate  State,  under  the  name  of  Franklin. 
Virginia,  through  Thomas  Jefferson,  finally  delivered 
a  deed  on  March  i,  1784,  by  which  she  ceded  to  the 
United  States  all  her  territory  northwest  of  the  Ohio. 
The  great  gift- was  accepted,  and  a  plan  of  govern- 
ment was  adopted,  into  which  Jefferson  tried  to  in- 
troduce an  antislavery  ordinance,   but    he  was  de- 
feated by  a  single  vote.     Again,  in  1 785,  Rufus  King, 
of   Massachusetts,   seconded  by  William   Ellery,   of 
Rhode  Island,  proposed  to  revive  Jefferson's  rejected 
clause,  but  again  it  failed,  being  smothered  by  a  com- 
mittee.    It  was  not  till  July  13,  1787,  that  the  statute 
was  passed  by  which  slavery  was  forever  prohibited 
in  the  territory  of  the  Northwest,  this  being  moved  by 
Nathan  Dane  as  an  amendment  to  an  ordinance  al- 
ready adopted— which  he  himself  had  framed— and 
being  passed  by  a  vote  of  every  State  present  in  the 
Congress,  eight  in  all.     Under  this  statute  the  Ohio 
Company— organized  in  Boston  the  year  before  as 
the  final  outcome  of  Rufus  Putnam's  proposed  col- 
ony of  officers— bought  from  the  government  five  or 
six  millions  of  acres,  and  entered  on  the  first  great 
movement   of   emigration   west   of    the    Ohio.     The 
act  creating  the  colony  provided  for  public  schools, 
for  religious  institutions,  and  for  a  university.     The 
land  was  to  be  paid  for  in  United  States  certificates 
of  debt,  and  its  price  in  specie  was  between  eight  and 
nine  cents  an  acre.     The  settlers  were  almost  wholly 
men  who  had  served  in  the  army,  and  were  used  to 
organization  and  discipline.     The  Indian  title  to  the 
lands  of  the  proposed  settlement  had  been  released 

293 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

by  treaty.  It  was  hailed  by  all  as  a  great  step  in  the 
national  existence,  although  it  was  really  a  far  great- 
er step  than  any  one  yet  dreamed.  "No  colony  in 
America,"  wrote  Washington,  "was  ever  settled  un- 
der such  favorable  auspices  as  that  which  has  just 
commenced  at  the  Muskingum." 

It  had  been  provided  that  the  new  Constitution 
should  go  into  effect  when  nine  States  had  ratified  it. 
That  period  having  arrived,  Congress  fixed  the  first 
Wednesday  in  January,  1789,  for  the  choice  of  Presi- 
dential electors,  and  the  first  Wednesday  in  March 
as  the  date  when  the   new  government   should  go 
into  power.     On  March  4,  1789,  the  Continental  Con- 
gress ceased  to  exist,  but  it  was  several  weeks  before 
either  House  of  the  new  Congress  was  organized.    On 
April  6th,  the  organization  of  the  two  Houses  being 
complete,  the  electoral  votes  were  counted;  and  on 
April  2 1  st  John  Adams  took  his  seat  as  Vice-presi- 
dent in  the  chair  of  the  Senate.     On  the    30th  of 
April  the  streets  around  the  old  "Federal  Hall"  in 
New  York  City  were  so  densely  crowded  that  it  seem- 
ed, in  the  vivid  phrase  of  an  eye-witness,  "as  if  one 
might  literally  walk  on  the  heads  of  the  people."     On 
the  balcony  of  the   hall  was  a  table  covered  with 
crimson  velvet,  upon  which  lay  a  Bible  on  a  crimson 
cushion.     Out  upon  the  balcony  came,  with  his  ac- 
customed dignity,  the  man  whose  generalship,  whose 
patience,  whose  self  -  denial  had  achieved  and  then 
preserved  the  liberties  of  the  nation — the  man  who, 
greater  than  Ca?sar,  had  held  a  kingly  crown  within 
reach  and  had  refused  it.     Washington  stood  a  mo- 
ment amid  the  shouts  of  the  people,  then  bowed,  and 
took  the  oath  administered  by  Chancellor  Livingston. 
At  this  moment  a  flag  was  raised  upon  the  cupola  of 

294 


THE    BIRTH    OF    A    NATION 

the  hall;  a  discharge  of  artillery  followed,  and  the 
assembled  people  again  filled  the  air  with  their  shout- 
ing. Thus  simple  was  the  ceremonial  which  an- 
nounced that  a  nation  was  born. 


XIII 
OUR    COUNTRY'S    CRADLE 

"  Peace,  which  in  our  country1 s  cradle 
Draws  the  sweet  infant  breath  of  gentle  sleep." 

Shakespeare.     Richard  II. ,  i.  3. 

THE  year  1789  saw  a  new  nation  in  its  cradle  in 
the  city  of  New  York.  Liberty  was  born,  but 
had  yet  to  learn  how  to  go  alone.  Political  prece- 
dents were  still  to  be  established,  social  customs  to 
be  formed  anew.  New  York  City,  the  first  seat  of 
national  government,  had  warmly  welcomed  Wash- 
ington, though  the  State  of  New  York  had  not  voted 
for  him ;  and  now  that  he  was  in  office,  men  and  wom- 
en waited  with  eager  interest  to  see  what  kind  of 
political  and  social  life  would  surround  him.  The 
city  then  contained  nearly  thirty-three  thousand  peo- 
ple. It  had  long  been  more  cosmopolitan  than  any 
other  in  the  colonies,  but  it  had  also  been  longer  oc- 
cupied by  the  British,  and  had  been  more  lately  un- 
der the  influence  of  loyal  traditions  and  royal  offi- 
cials. This  influence  the  languid  sway  of  the  Confed- 
eration had  hardly  dispelled.  What  condition  of 
things  would  the  newly  organized  republic  establish  ? 
It  was  a  period  of  much  social  display.  Class  dis- 
tinctions still  prevailed  strongly,  for  the  French  Rev- 
olution had  not  yet  followed  the  American  Revolu- 
tion   to    sweep   them    away.     Employers    were    still 

296 


OUR    COUNTRY'S    CRADLE 

called  masters ;  gentlemen  still  wore  velvets,  damasks, 
knee-breeches,  silk  stockings,  silver  buckles,  ruffled 
shirts,  voluminous  cravats,  scarlet  cloaks.  The  Rev- 
olution had  made  many  poor,  but  it  had  enriched 
many,  and  money  was  lavishly  spent.  People  gave 
great  entertainments,  kept  tankards  of  punch  on  the 
table  for  morning  visitors  of  both  sexes,  and  returned 
in  sedan-chairs  from  evening  parties.  Dr.  Manasseh 
Cutler  went  to  a  dinner-party  of  forty-four  gentle- 
men at  the  house  of  General  Knox,  just  before  his 
appointment  as  Secretary  of  War.  All  the  guests 
were  officers  of  the  late  Continental  army,  and  every 
one,  except  Cutler  himself,  wore  the  badge  of  the 
Society  of  the  Cincinnati.  On  another  occasion  he 
dined  there  with  a  French  nobleman ;  the  dinner  was 
served  "in  high  style,  much  in  the  French  style." 
Mrs.  Knox  seemed  to  him  to  mimic  "the  military 
style,"  which  he  found  "  very  disgusting  in  a  female." 
This  is  his  description  of  her  head-dress:  "Her  hair 
in  front  is  craped  at  least  a  foot  high,  much  in  the 
form  of  a  churn  bottom  upward,  and  topped  off  with 
a  wire  skeleton  in  the  same  form,  covered  with  black 
gauze,  which  hangs  in  streamers  down  her  back.  Her 
hair  behind  is  in  a  large  braid,  and  confined  with  a 
monstrous  crooked  comb." 

Mrs.  Knox's  head-dress  would  have  had  no  more 
importance  than  that  of  any  other  lady  of  the  period 
but  that  no  other  lady  came  so  near  to  being  the 
active  head  of  American  "society"  at  the  outset  of 
this  government.  General  Knox  and  his  wife  were 
two  people  of  enormous  size — were,  indeed,  said  to 
be  the  largest  couple  in  New  York — and  they  were 
as  expansive  in  their  hospitality  as  in  their  persons. 
The  European  visitors,  who  were  abundant  about 
20  297 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

that  time,  and  especially  the  numerous  Frenchmen 
who  flocked  to  see  the  new  republic — and  who  then, 
as  now,  gravitated  naturally  to  that  society  where 
they  were  best  amused — turned  readily  to  Mrs. 
Knox's  entertainments  from  those  of  Mrs.  Washing- 
ton. One  traveller  even  complained  of  the  new  Presi- 
dent that  his  bows  were  more  distant  and  stiff  than 
any  he  had  seen  in  England.  Of  the  other  members 
of  the  cabinet,  neither  Hamilton,  Jefferson,  nor  Ran- 
dolph was  in  a  position  to  receive  company  in  the 
grand  style,  so  that  during  the  short  period  when 
New  York  was  the  seat  of  government  the  house  of 
General  Knox  in  Broadway  was  emphatically  the 
centre  of  social  vivacity  for  the  nation. 

This  was  a  matter  of  some  importance  when  more 
political  questions  were  settled  at  the  dinner-table 
than  in  public  debate,  and  when  Washington  himself 
would  invite  his  subordinates'  to  discuss  affairs  of 
State  "over  a  bottle  of  wine."  The  social  life  of  any 
community  is  always  the  foundation  of  its  political 
life,  and  this  was  especially  true  when  the  United 
States  began  to  exist,  because  there  was  a  general 
suspicion  in  Europe  that  the  new  republic  would  be 
hopelessly  plebeian.  When  we  consider  that  even 
in  1845  an  English  lady  of  rank,  trying  to  dissuade 
Dickens  from  visiting  America,  said,  "Why  do  you 
not  go  down  to  Brighton,  and  visit  the  third  and 
fourth  rate  people  there?— that  would  be  just  the 
same,"  we  know  that  she  only  expressed  the  current 
British  feeling,  which  must  have  existed  very  much 
more  strongly  in  1789.  What  could  be  the  social 
condition  of  that  country  whose  highest  official  had 
never  been  in  Europe,  and  did  not  speak  French? 
Against  this  suspicion  the  six  white  horses  of  Presi- 

298 


OUR    COUNTRY'S    CRADLE 

dent  Washington  were  a  comparatively  slight  protest. 
Mere  wealth  can  buy  horses ;  indeed,  they  are  among 
the  first  symptoms  of  wealth.  To  discerning  ob- 
servers the  true  mark  of  superiority  was  to  be  found 
in  the  grave  dignity  of  the  man.  It  is  hard  to  see 
how  he  acquired  that  trait  among  the  jovial  fox- 
hunting squires  in  whose  society  he  had  been  reared ; 
perhaps  his  real  training  was  in  his  long  and  silent 
expeditions  in  the  woods.  His  manners  and  his  bear- 
ing showed  the  marks  of  that  forest  life,  and  not  of 
an  artificial  society;  his  gait,  according  to  his  en- 
thusiastic admirer,  William  Sullivan,  was  that  of  a 
farmer  or  woodsman,  not  of  a  soldier;  he  reminded 
Josiah  Quincy  of  the  country  gentlemen  from  west- 
ern Massachusetts,  not  accustomed  to  mix  much  in 
society,  and  not  easy  or  graceful,  though  strictly 
polite.  But  the  most  genuine  personal  dignity  he 
certainly  had;  his  wife  sustained  him  in  it — at  least 
until  party  bitterness  began  to  prevail — and  there- 
fore the  young  French  noblemen  found  his  manners 
as  unquestionably  good  as  their  own,  though  less 
pliant. 

Nor  were  any  of  the  members  of  his  cabinet  want- 
ing in  this  respect.  French  society  as  well  as  French 
political  principles  had  influenced  Jefferson,  and  he 
showed  by  his  flattering  words  to  Madame  de  Bre- 
han  and  other  fine  ladies  that  he  had  cultivated  the 
arts  of  a  courtier;  Hamilton  had  refined  manners, 
with  the  ready  adaptation  that  came  from  his  French 
blood  and  his  West  India  birth ;  Randolph  was  called 
"the  first  gentleman  of  Virginia,"  though  described 
by  Sullivan  as  grave  and  heavy  in  aspect ;  while  the 
cheerful  Knox  was  a  man  of  better  early  education 
than  any  of  these,  for  he  had  been  a  bookseller,  and 

299 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

his  book-store  in  Boston  had  been,  it  is  recorded,  "  a 
great  resort  for  the  British  officers  and  Tory  ladies 
who  were  the  ton  at  that  period."  Tried  by  the 
standard  of  the  time,  there  was  nothing  to  be  ashamed 
of,  but  indeed  quite  the  contrary,  in  the  bearing  of 
Washington's  cabinet  ministers.  John  Adams  was 
Vice-president,  and  the  Chief -justice  was  the  high- 
minded  John  Jay.  Both  these  men  had  agreeable 
and  accomplished  wives.  Mrs.  Adams  was  a  woman 
of  much  social  experience  as  well  as  talent  and  char- 
acter. She  describes  Mrs  Jay  as  "showy  but  pleas- 
ing," and  both  these  women  appear  to  greatest  ad- 
vantage in  their  letters  to  their  respective  husbands. 
As  to  the  households  of  the  cabinet  ministers,  Jeffer- 
son was  a  widower ;  Mrs.  Knox  has  already  been  char- 
acterized ;  and  the  French  traveller  Brissot  described 
Mrs.  Hamilton  as  "a  charming  woman,  who  joined 
to  the  graces  all  the  candor  and  simp  ci  y  of  the 
American  wife."  These  made  the  heading '  official 
families  at  the  seat  of  government. 

The  French  Minister  at  that  t  me  was  the  Comte 
de  Moustier,  whose  sist  r,  Madame  de  Brehan,  ac- 
companied him  to  this  country.  Jefferson  had  as- 
sured her  that  her  manners  were  a  "model  of  per- 
fection," while  others  found  her  "a  little,  singular, 
whimsical,  hysterical  old  woman."  The  secretary  of 
legation  was  M.  Otto,  part  of  whose  keen  and  pene- 
trating correspondence  has  been  translated  by  Ban- 
croft; he  had  married  an  American  wife,  one  of  the 
Livingston  family.  The  English  consul-general,  Sir 
John  Temple,  had  also  married  an  American,  the 
daughter  of  Governor  Bowdoin,  of  Massachusetts. 
These  were  the  leading  people  "in  society" — a  so- 
ciety whose  standard,  after  all,  was  not  luxurious  or 

200 


OUR    COUNTRY'S    CRADLE 

extravagant.  Oliver  Wolcott  wrote  to  his  wife  when 
he  was  invited  to  come  to  New  York  as  Auditor  of  the 
Treasury:  "The  example  of  the  President  and  his 
family  will  render  parade  and  expense  improper  and 
disreputable."  It  is  pleasant  to  add  that  after  three 
months'  stay  at  the  seat  of  government  he  wrote 
home  to  his  mother,  "  Honesty  is  as  much  in  fashion 
as  in  Connecticut." 

Mrs.  Washington's  receptions  were  reproached  as 
"introductory  to  the  pageantry  of  courts,"  but  it 
was  very  modest  pageantry.  Nothing  could  have 
been  less  festive  or  more  harmless  than  the  hospitality 
of  the  Presidential  abode.  An  English  manufacturer 
who  was  invited  there  to  breakfast  reports  a  meal  of 
admirable  simplicity — tea,  coffee,  sliced  tongue,  dry 
toast,  and  butter — "but  no  broiled  fish,  as  is  the 
general  custom,"  he  adds.  At  her  evening  recep- 
tions Mrs.  Washington  offered  her  guests  tea  and 
coffee  with  plum -cake ;  at  nine  she  warned  her  visitors 
that  the  general  kept  early  hours,  and  after  this  re- 
mark the  guest  had  no  choice  but  to  do  the  same. 
At  these  entertainments  of  hers  the  President  was 
but  a  guest — without  his  sword — and  found  it  neces- 
sary also  to  retreat  in  good  order  at  the  word  of  com- 
mand. His  own  receptions  were  for  invited  guests 
only,  and  took  place  every  other  week  between  three 
and  four  p.m.  The  President  stood  before  the  fire- 
place in  full  black  velvet,  with  his  hair  powdered  and 
gathered  into  a  bag ;  he  wore  yellow  gloves  and  silver 
buckles,  with  a  steel-hilted  sword  in  a  white  leather 
scabbard;  he  held  in  his  hand  a  cocked  hat  with  a 
feather.  This  is  the  description  given  by  William 
Sullivan  in  his  Familiar  Letters  on  Public  Characters. 

If  it  was  the  object  of  Washington  to  make  these 

301 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

occasions  stiffer  than  the  drawing-rooms  of  any 
crowned  potentate,  he  succeeded.  Names  were  an- 
nounced, gentlemen  were  presented,  the  President 
bowed,  but  never  shook  hands;  at  a  quarter-past 
three  the  doors  were  closed  and  the  visitors  formed 
a  circle;  the  President  made  the  circuit,  addressing 
a  few  words  to  each;  then  they  bowed  and  retired. 
It  is  hard  to  imagine  that  these  mild  entertainments 
could  have  been  severely  censured  as  extravagant  or 
monarchical;  one  can  better  comprehend  how  the 
censure  could  be  applied  to  the  street  equipage  of 
the  new  President — the  cream-colored  carriage  paint- 
ed in  medallions  and  the  liveries  of  white  turned  up 
with  green.  Yet  these  were,  perhaps,  more  readily 
recognized  as  essential  to  the  dignity  of  his  station. 
It  was  with  the  desire  of  promoting  this  dignity 
that  the  Senators  of  the  new  nation  were  anxious  to 
give  the  President  an  official  title.  The  plan  was 
said  to  have  originated  with  John  Adams,  who  be- 
lieved "splendor  and  majesty"  to  be  important  in  a 
republic;  and  there  was  a  joint  committee  of  Con- 
gress to  consider  the  matter.  This  committee  re- 
ported against  it,  but  the  diss'atisfied  Senate  still 
favored  a  title,  as  it  well  might,  at  a  time  when  the 
Senators  themselves  were  habitually  called  "Most 
Honorable."  They  proposed  to  call  the  Chief  Mag- 
istrate "His  Highness  the  President  of  the  United 
States  of  America  and  Protector  of  their  Liberties." 
The  House  objected ;  the  country  at  large  was  divided. 
Chief -justice  McKean  proposed  "His  Serene  High- 
ness"; somebody  else  suggested  "The  President -Gen- 
eral";  arid  Governor  Sullivan  thought  that  "His  Pa- 
triotic Majesty"  would  not  be  inappropriate,  since 
he  represented  the  majesty  of  the  people.     Wash- 

302 


OUR    COUNTRY'S    CRADLE 

ington  himself,  it  is  said,  favored  "His  High  Mighti- 
ness," which  was  the  phrase  used  by  the  Stadtholder 
of  Holland.  It  was  the  common-sense  of  the  nation 
that  swept  these  extravagances  aside;  it  was  one  of 
the  many  occasions  in  American  history  when  the 
truth  of  Talleyrand's  saying  has  been  vindicated,  that 
everybody  knows  more  than  anybody. 

But  when  it  became  needful  to  go  behind  these 
externals,  and  to  select  a  cabinet  ministry  for  the 
actual  work  of  government,  the  sane  and  quiet  judg- 
ment of  Washington  made  itself  felt.     At  that  period 
the  cabinet  consisted  of  but  four  persons,  and  it  was 
the  theory  that  it  should  not  be  made  up  of  mere 
clerks  and  staff  officers,  but  of  the  ablest  and  most 
conspicuous  men  in  the  nation.     Washington  being 
President,  Adams  and  Jay  having  also  been  assigned 
to  office,  there  naturally  followed  the  two  men  who 
had  contributed  most  in  their  different  ways  to  the 
intellectual   construction   of  the   nation.     Hamilton 
and  Jefferson  were  brought  together  in  the  cabinet— 
the  one  as  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  the  other  as 
Secretary  of  State— not  because  they  agreed,  but  be- 
cause they  differed.     Tried  by   all  immediate  ^  and 
temporary  tests,  it  is  impossible  to  deny  to  Hamilton 
the  position  of  leading  intellect  during  the  early  consti- 
tutional period ;  and  his  clear  and  cogent  ability  con- 
trasts strongly  with  the  peculiar  mental  action,  al- 
ways fresh  and  penetrating,  but  often  lawless  and 
confused,  of  his  great  rival.     Hamilton  was  more  co- 
herent, more  truthful,  more  combative,  more  gener- 
ous, and  more  limited.     His  power  was  as  an  organ- 
izer and  advocate  of  measures,  and  this  is  a  less  secure 
passport  to  fame  than  lies  in  the  announcement  of 
great  principles.     The  difference  between  Hamilton 

303 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

and  Jefferson  on  questions  of  finance  and  State  rights 
was  only  the  symbol  of  a  deeper  divergence.  The 
contrast  between  them  was  not  so  much  in  acts  as 
in  theories;  not  in  what  they  did,  but  in  what  they 
dreamed.  Both  had  their  visions,  and  held  to  them 
ardently,  but  the  spirit  of  the  nation  was  fortunately 
stronger  than  either;  it  made  Hamilton  support  a 
republic  against  his  will,  and  made  Jefferson  acquiesce, 
in  spite  of  himself,  in  a  tolerably  strong  central  gov- 
ernment. 

There  is  not  a  trace  of  evidence  that  Hamilton, 
even  when  most  denounced  as  a  "monocrat"  and  a 
"monist,"  ever  desired  to  bring  about  a  monarchy 
in  America.  He  no  doubt  believed  the  British  con- 
stitution to  be  the  most  perfect  model  of  government 
ever  devised  by  man ;  but  it  is  also  true,  as  Jefferson 
himself  admitted,  that  Hamilton  saw  the  spirit  of  the 
American  people  to  be  wholly  republican.  This  is 
just  what  Hamilton  says  of  himself;  all  his  action 
was  based  on  the  opinion  "that  the  political  princi- 
ple of  this  country  would  endure  nothing  but  repub- 
lican government."  Fisher  Ames,  his  ablest  ally, 
said  the  same  as  explicitly:  "Monarchy  is  no  path  of 
liberty — offers  no  hopes.  It  could  not  stand;  and 
would,  if  tried,  lead  to  more  agitation  and  revolution 
than  anything  else."  What  Hamilton  and  Ames  be- 
lieved— and  very  reasonably,  so  far  as  the  mere  teach- 
ings of  experience  went — was  that  a  republic  was  an 
enormous  risk  to  run ;  and  they  drew  the  very  ques- 
tionable conclusion  that  this  risk  must  be  diminished 
by  making  the  republic  as  much  like  a  monarchy  as 
possible.  For  instance,  if  Hamilton  could  have  had 
his  way,  only  holders  of  real  estate  would  have  had 
the  right  to  vote  for  President  and   Senators,   and 

304 


OUR    COUNTRY'S    CRADLE 

these  would  have  held  offiee  for  life,  or  at  least  during 
good  behavior;  the  President  would  have  appointed 
all  the  governors  of  States,  and  they  would  have  had 
a  veto  on  all  State  legislation.  All  this  he  announced 
in  the  Constitutional  Convention  with  the  greatest 
frankness,  not  hesitating  to  call  even  the  British 
House  of  Lords  " a  most  noble  institution."  Having 
thus  indicated  his  ideal  government,  he  accepted 
what  he  could  get,  and  gave  his  great  powers  to  carry- 
ing out  a  constitution  about  which  he  had  serious 
misgivings.  On  the  other  hand,  if  Jefferson  could 
have  had  his  way,  national  organization  would  have 
been  a  shadow.  "Were  it  left  me  to  decide,"  he 
once  wrote,  "whether  we  should  have  a  government 
without  newspapers  or  a  newspaper  without  a  gov- 
ernment, I  should  not  hesitate  a  moment  to  prefer 
the  latter."  He  accepted  the  Constitution  as  a  neces- 
sary evil,  tempered  by  newspapers — then  the  very 
worst  newspapers  that  ever  nourished  on  American 
soil. 

"Hamilton  and  I,"  wrote  Jefferson,  "were  pitted 
against  each  other  every  day  in  the  cabinet,  like  two 
fighting-cocks."  The  first  passage  between  them  was 
the  only  one  in  which  Hamilton  had  clearly  the 
advantage  of  his  less  practised  antagonist,  making 
Jefferson,  indeed,  the  instrument  of  his  own  defeat. 
The  transfer  of  the  capital  to  the  banks  of  the  Poto- 
mac was  secured  by  the  first  of  many  compromises 
between  the  northern  and  southern  States,  after  a 
debate  in  which  the  formidable  slavery  question 
showed  itself  often,  as  it  had  shown  itself  at  the  very 
formation  of  the  Constitution.  The  removal  of  the 
capital  was  clearly  the  price  paid  by  Hamilton  for 
Jefferson's  acquiescence  in   his  first   great   financial 

305 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

measure.  This  measure  was  the  national  assumption 
of  the  State  debts  to  an  amount  not  to  exceed  twenty 
million  dollars.  It  was  met  by  vehement  opposition, 
partly  because  it  bore  very  unequally  on  the  States, 
but  mainly  on  the  ground  that  the  claims  were  in  the 
hands  of  speculators,  and  were  greatly  depreciated. 
Yet  it  was  an  essential  part  of  that  great  series  of 
financial  projects  on  which  Hamilton's  fame  must 
rest,  even  more  than  on  his  papers  in  The  Federalist 
—though  these  secured  the  adoption  of  the  Constitu- 
tion. Three  measures — the  assumption  of  the  State 
debts,  the  funding  act,  and  the  national  bank — were 
what  changed  the  bankruptcy  of  the  new  nation  into 
solvency  and  credit.  There  may  be  question  as  to 
the  good  or  bad  precedents  established  by  these  enact- 
ments, but  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  their  imme- 
diate success.  Jefferson  opposed  them;  it  is  certain 
that  Jefferson  never  could  have  originated  them  or 
carried  them  through.  The  financial  problem— the 
first,  and  in  one  sense  the  lowest  problem  to  be  met 
by  the  new  government — was  solved  by  Hamilton. 

It  seems  curious  to  find  in  the  correspondence  of 
the  public  men  of  that  day  so  little  that  relates  to  the 
appointment  or  removal  of  particular  officials.  One 
reason  is  that  the  officials  were  then  so  few.  The 
whole  number  in  civil  office  during  Washington's  ad- 
ministration were,  in  his  own  phrase,  "a  mere  hand- 
ful," and  during  his  two  Presidential  terms  he  re- 
moved but  eight,  all  for  cause,  this  list  not  including 
Pinckney,  the  French  Minister,  who  was  recalled 
by  desire  of  the  government  of  that  nation.  The 
question  of  removal  was  almost  wholly  an  abstract 
one,  but,  fortunately  for  us,  the  men  of  that  period 
had  a  great  taste  for  the  abstract  principles  of  gov- 

306 


OUR    COUNTRY'S    CRADLE 

ernment ;  and  the  consequence  was  that  this  particular 
question  was  debated  as  fully  and  ardently  as  if  the 
number  of  officials  had  already  been  reckoned  by 
tens  of  thousands.  Many  points  in  the  prolonged 
controversy  seem  like  the  civil  service  discussions  of 
to-day.  The  main  debate  took  place  in  the  House 
of  Representatives,  beginning  June  16,  1789,  and 
lasting  four  days ;  and  it  is  fortunately  preserved  to  us 
in  full  as  a  part  of  the  appendix  to  Elliott's  Debates. 
It  arose  on  the  bill  to  establish  the  Department  of 
Foreign  Affairs,  afterwards  called  the  State  Depart- 
ment. It  was  moved  to  strike  out  the  words — as 
applied  to  the  officer  thus  created — "to  be  remov- 
able from  office  by  the  President  of  the  United  States." 
The  importance  of  the  subject  was  amply  recognized, 
Mr.  Madison  going  so  far  as  to  say:  "The  decision 
that  is  at  this  time  made  will  become  the  permanent 
exposition  of  the  constitution ;  and  on  a  permanent  ex- 
position of  the  constitution  will  depend  the  genius 
and  character  of  the  whole  government.,,  He  and 
others  took  the  ground  that  in  no  way  could  full 
executive  responsibility  be  placed  upon  the  Presi- 
dent unless  he  had  a  corresponding  power  over  his 
subordinates.  All  the  familiar  arguments  in  favor 
of  a  strong  government  were  brought  forward,  and 
they  were  met  by  the  obvious  arguments  against 
it.  "This  clause  of  the  bill,"  said  Page,  of  North 
Carolina,  "contains  in  it  the  seeds  of  royal  preroga- 
tive. Everything  which  has  been  said  in  favor  of 
energy  in  the  Executive  may  go  to  the  destruction 
of  freedom  and  establish  despotism.  This  very 
energy,  so  much  talked  of,  has  led  many  patriots  to 
the  Bastile,  to  the  block,  and  to  the  halter." 

Perhaps  the  ablest  assailant  of  the  power  of  re- 

307 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

moval  was  Elbridge  Gerry,  of  Massachusetts  —  he 
through  whom  a  new  and  permanent  phrase  was  later 
added  to  the  American  dialect  in  the  word  gerrymander. 
He  claimed  in  this  debate  that  unlimited  removal 
from  office  belonged  only  to  a  king;  that  to  a  four 
years'  President  such  power  could  only  be  made  use- 
ful "by  being  the  means  of  procuring  him  a  re-elec- 
tion." If  this  step  were  taken,  he  said,  the  Presi- 
dency should  be  for  life,  or  even  hereditary.  With 
some  foresight  of  our  later  experience  he  added: 
"The  officers,  instead  of  being  the  machinery  of  the 
government,  moving  in  regular  order  prescribed  by 
the  legislature,  will  be  the  mere  puppets  of  the  Presi- 
dent, to  be  employed  or  thrown  aside  as  useless  lum- 
ber according  to  his  fancy."  His  arguments  did  not 
prevail;  the  clause  was  retained  by  a  vote  of  34  to 
20,  and  after  some  further  modification  the  bill  pass- 
ed by  a  small  majority  in  the  House,  and  by  the 
casting  vote  of  the  Vice-president  in  the  Senate. 
The  result  of  that  vote  has  not  been  followed  by  quite 
the  evils  that  Page  and  Gerry  feared,  but  it  has  un- 
doubtedly influenced,  as  Madison  predicted,  the 
genius  and  character  of  the  whole  government.  It  is 
to  be  remembered  that  no  prophetic  vision  had  yet 
revealed  to  any  one  the  vast  future  population  for 
which  Congress  was  legislating,  and  Madison  plainly 
thought  himself  making  a  very  bold  guess  when  he 
estimated  that  it  might  "in  some  years"  double  in 
number,  and  reach  six  millions. 

On  the  1 6th  of  July,  1790,  Congress  made  up  its 
mind  to  remove  to  the  banks  of  the  Potomac ;  but 
before  the  site  was  fixed  upon,  the  seat  of  government 
was  temporarily  transferred  (in  November,  1790)  to 
Philadelphia,  then  the  largest  town  in  the  country 

308 


OUR    COUNTRY'S    CRADLE 

and  claiming  to  be  regarded  as  its  metropolis.  The 
French  visitors  criticised  the  city,  found  its  rectangu- 
lar formation  tiresome  and  the  habits  of  its  people 
sad;  but  Americans  thought  it  gay  and  delightful. 
Brissot  de  Warville  declared  that  the  pretensions  of 
the  ladies  were  "  too  affected  to  be  pleasing,"  and  the 
Comte  de  Rochambeau  said  that  the  wives  of  mer- 
chants went  to  the  extreme  of  French  fashions.  Mrs. 
John  Adams,  who  had  lived  in  Europe,  complained 
of  a  want  of  etiquette,  but  found  Philadelphia  so- 
ciety eminently  friendly  and  agreeable.  Superior 
taste  and  a  livelier  wit  were  habitually  claimed  for 
the  Philadelphia  ladies.  It  was  said  by  a  vivacious 
maiden  who  went  from  that  city  to  New  York — 
Rebecca  Franks,  afterwards  Lady  Johnston — that 
the  Philadelphia  belles  had  "more  cleverness  in  the 
turn  of  an  eye  than  those  of  New  York  in  their  whole 
composition."  In  the  latter  city,  she  said,  there  was 
no  conversation  without  the  aid  of  cards;  in  Phila- 
delphia the  chat  never  flagged.  There  were  plenty 
of  leading  ladies.  Mrs.  Knox  was  still  conspicuous, 
playing  perpetual  whist.  Mrs.  Bingham  was  the 
most  charming  of  hostesses ;  and  among  women  com- 
ing from  other  parts  of  the  country,  and  celebrated 
for  character  or  beauty,  were  Mrs.  Theodore  Sedg- 
wick, of  Massachusetts,  and  Mrs.  Oliver  Wolcott,  of 
Litchfield,  Connecticut.  It  was  of  the  latter  that 
the  story  is  told  that  the  British  Minister  said  to 
Senator  Tracy,  of  Connecticut:  "Your  countrywom- 
an would  be  admired  at  St.  James's."  "Sir,"  said 
the  patriotic  American,  "she  is  admired  even  on 
Litchfield  Hill." 

There  was  in   Philadelphia  a  theatre  which  was 
much  attended,  and  which  must  have  had  a  rather 

309 


HISTORY    OF    THE     UNITED    STATES 

exceptional  company  of  actors  for  that  period,  inas- 
much as  Chief -justice  Jay  assured  his  wife  that  it 
was  composed  of  "decent,  moral  people."  In  so- 
ciety, habits  were  not  always  quite  moral  or  con- 
versation always  quite  decent.  Gentlemen,  accord- 
ing to  John  Adams,  sat  till  eleven  o'clock  over  their 
after-dinner  wine,  and  drank  healths  in  that  elabo- 
rate way  which  still  amazes  the  American  visitor  in 
England.  Nay,  young  ladies,  if  we  may  accept  Miss 
Rebecca  Franks  as  authority,  drank  each  other's 
health  out  of  punch  tankards  in  the  morning.  Gam- 
bling prevailed  among  both  sexes.  It  was  not  un- 
common to  hear  that  a  man  or  woman  had  lost  three 
or  four  hundred  dollars  in  an  evening.  An  anony- 
mous letter- writer,  quoted  in  Mr.  Gris wold's  Repub- 
lican Court,  declares  that  some  resident  families  could 
not  have  supported  the  cost  of  their  entertainments 
and  their  losses  at  loo  but  that  they  had  the  adroit- 
ness to  make  the  temporary  residents  pay  their  ex- 
penses. At  balls  people  danced  country-dances,  the 
partners  being  designated  beforehand  by  the  host, 
and  being  usually  unchanged  during  the  whole  even- 
ing— though  "  this  severity  was  sometimes  mitigated," 
in  the  language  of  the  Marquis  de  Chastellux — and 
the  supper  was  served  about  midnight.  Talleyrand, 
in  later  years,  looking  back  on  the  Philadelpnia  of 
that  period,  found  its  luxury  a  theme  for  sarcasm  in 
quality  as  well  as  quantity;  Leur  luxe  est  affreux,  he 
said.  Going  beyond  the  strict  circles  of  fashion,  we 
find  that  some  social  peculiarities  which  we  regard 
as  recent  seem  to  have  existed  in  full  force  at  the  very 
foundation  of  the  republic.  The  aversion  of  white 
Americans  to  domestic  service,  the  social  freedom 
given  to  young  girls,  the  habit  of  eating  hot  bread — 

310 


OUR    COUNTRY'S    CRADLE 

these  form  the  constant  theme  of  remark  by  the 
French  visitors  in  the  time  of  Washington.  In  some 
physiological  matters  American  habits  are  now  un- 
questionably modified  for  the  better.  Chastellux  re- 
ports that  at  the  best  dinners  of  the  period  there  was 
usually  but  one  course  besides  the  dessert ;  and  Vol- 
ney  describes  people  as  drinking  very  strong  tea  im- 
mediately after 'this  meal,  and  closing  the  evening 
with  a  supper  of  salt  meat.  At  other  points,  again, 
the  national  traits  seem  to  have  been  bewilderingly 
transformed  by  the  century  that  has  since  passed. 
The  Chevalier  de  Beaujour  describes  Americans  as 
usually  having  ruddy  complexions,  but  without  deli- 
cacy of  feature  or  play  of  expression;  whereas  all 
these  characteristics  will  be  found  by  the  testimony 
of  later  travellers  to  be  now  precisely  reversed,  the 
features  having  grown  delicate,  the  expression  viva- 
cious, and  the  complexion  pale. 

The  standard  of  women's  education  was  still  low, 
and  in  society  they  had  to  rely  on  native  talent  and 
the  conversation  of  clever  men;  yet  Mercy  Warren's 
history  had  been  accepted  as  a  really  able  work,  and 
Phillis  Wheatley's  poems  had  passed  for  a  phenom- 
enon. Mrs.  Morton,  of  Massachusetts,  also,  under 
the  name  of  "  Philenia,"  had  published  a  poem  called 
"  Beacon  Hill,"  of  which  Robert  Treat  Paine,  himself 
a  man  of  ability,  had  written  in  this  admiring  strain : 

"Beacon  shall  live,  the  theme  of  future  lays, 
Philenia  bids;  obsequious  time  obeys. 
Beacon  shall  live,  embalmed  in  verse  sublime, 
The  new  Parnassus  of  a  nobler  clime." 

The  original  beacon  has  long  since  fallen;  the  hill 
to  which  it  gave  its  name  has  been  much  cut  down; 

3" 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

and  the  fame  of  Philenia  has  been  yet  more  sadly 
obliterated.  Yet  she  and  such  as  she  undoubtedly 
contributed  to  the  vague  suspicions  of  monarchical 
design  which  began  to  array  themselves  against 
Washington.  For  did  not  these  tuneful  people  write 
birthday  odes  to  him;  and  were  not  birthday  odes 
clearly  monarchical? 

Great  men  are  sometimes  influenced  by  minor  con- 
siderations. It  is  probable  that  Washington's  'de- 
sire to  retire  from  the  Presidency  after  one  term  was 
largely  due  to  the  public  criticisms  on  such  innocent 
things  as  these  melodious  flatteries  and  Mrs.  Wash- 
ington's receptions.  But  he  was  still  overwhelming- 
ly popular,  and  his  re-election  in  1792  was  unani- 
mous. John  Adams  was  again  Vice  -  president,  and 
the  seat  of  government  was  still  Philadelphia.  It 
was  thought  at  first  by  both  Jefferson  and  Hamilton 
that  the  ceremony  of  a  reinauguration  should  be  a 
wholly  private  one  at  the  President's  house,  but  it 
was  finally  decided  by  the  cabinet  that  it  should  be 
public  and  in  the  Senate  chamber.  Washington  thus 
entered  on  a  second  term  of  office,  which  was  destined 
to  be  far  stormier  than  his  first  term.  There  were 
the  Indian  troubles  to  be  settled,  the  whiskey  insur- 
rection in  Pennsylvania  to  be  curbed,  and  the  bal- 
ance of  neutrality  to  be  kept  between  France  and 
England.  The  first  two  questions,  though  they  seem- 
ed to  belong  to  military  matters  alone,  were  yet  com- 
plicated with  politics,  and  the  last  was  interwoven 
with  the  public  affairs  of  all  Europe.  No  President, 
except  Abraham  Lincoln,  has  ever  yet  had  to  deal 
with  questions  so  difficult ;  and  it  is  to  be  remembered 
that  Lincoln  had  behind  him  the  aid  of  national  tra- 
ditions already  formed,  while  Washington  dealt  with 

312 


OUR    COUNTRY'S    CRADLE 

a  newly  organized  government,  and  had  to  create 
even  the  traditions. 

The  great  scheme  for  rilling  the  Northwestern  Ter- 
ritory with  settlers  had  seriously  lagged.  Great 
Britain  still  held  her  posts  there ;  this  encouraged  the 
Indian  tribes  which  had  never  been  included  in  the 
treaty  of  peace.  It  was  at  this  time  that  Kentucky 
earned  the  name  of  the  "dark  and  bloody  ground," 
more  than  fifteen  hundred  of  her  pioneer  settlers 
having  been  killed  or  captured  within  a  few  years. 
General  Mercer  was  sent  against  the  Indians  with  a 
small  body  of  men  in  1790,  and  was  defeated;  Gen- 
eral St.  Clair  wTas  ordered  out  the  following  year,  with 
a  much  larger  force,  and  was  beaten  disastrously, 
losing  nearly  a  thousand  men  and  many  cannon. 
Washington  tried  in  vain  to  reach  the  Indians  by 
treaty,  and  it  took  "Mad  Anthony  Wayne"  and  five 
thousand  men  to  bring  about  peace  at  last.  Near 
the  site  of  what  is  now  Cincinnati,  Wayne  made  his 
winter  camp  in  1793;  he  built  forts  to  strengthen  his 
forward  march,  and  in  August,  1794,  fought  the  bat- 
tle of  Maumee  Rapids  against  Indians  and  Canadians 
with  the  aid  of  eleven  hundred  Kentucky  volunteers. 
In  this  battle  he  completely  and  finally  routed  the 
Miami  Indians,  with  a  loss  of  but  one  hundred  men, 
and  within  sight  of  a  British  fort;  and  he  forced  the 
enemy  to  cease  hostilities.  On  August  3 ,  1795,  Wayne 
stood  in  presence  of  more  than  a  thousand  Indians 
at  one  of  his  forts,  now  Greenville,  Ohio,  and  there 
made  a  treaty  which  put  an  end  to  the  Indian  wars. 
This,  with  the  provisions  of  Jay's  treaty  with  Eng- 
land, presently  to  be  mentioned,  flung  open  the  west- 
ern country  to  the  tide  of  settlers. 

The  French  Revolution,  passing  from  its  period  of 

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HISTORY    GF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

promise  into  its  epoch  of  terror,  had  divided  Ameri- 
can feeling  as  it  had  not  before  been  sundered.  This 
formidable  French  question  had  ceased  to  be  a  mere 
test  of  political  sympathy;  it  was  a  matter  of  social 
feeling  as  well.  England  was  the  traditional  enemy 
of  the  nation,  France  the  traditional  friend;  yet 
France  was  causing  horror  to  the  world,  while  Eng- 
land stood  for  established  order.  Those  who  had 
tried  to  save  the  American  experiment  by  keeping 
as  near  the  English  constitution  as  possible  might 
well  point  to  France  as  the  example  of  the  opposite 
method.  Accordingly,  the  Federalists,  who  com- 
prised the  wealthier  and  more  prominent  class  of  the 
nation,  renewed  their  fidelity  to  the  English  traditions. 
They  called  the  Democrats  sans  culottes,  and  regarded 
them  not  merely  as  belonging  to  the  less  educated 
and  less  dignified  class — which  was  true — but  as  so- 
cially polluted  and  degraded.  When  the  President's 
wife  found  that  her  granddaughter,  Nelly  Custis,  had 
been  receiving  a  guest  in  her  absence,  she  asked  who 
it  was ;  then  noticing  a  stain  where  a  head  had  rested 
against  the  straw-colored  wall-paper,  she  exclaimed: 
"It  was  no  Federalist:  none  but  a  filthy  Democrat 
would  mark  the  wall  with  his  good-for-nothing  head 
in  that  manner."  Such  remarks,  when  repeated  from 
mouth  to  mouth,  did  not  conduce  to  the  amenities  of 
life. 

Yet  the  good  lady  had  plenty  of  provocation. 
Much  could  be  pardoned  to  a  wife  who  had  seen  on 
printed  handbills  the  coarse  wood-cuts  that  repre- 
sented Washington  as  placed  upon  the  guillotine  like 
the  French  king.  Such  a  caricature,  when  injudi- 
ciously shown  by  Knox  to  the  President  at  a  cabi- 
net meeting,  drove  him  into  "  a  transport  of  passion," 

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OUR    COUNTRY'S    CRADLE 

according  to  the  not  always  trustworthy  record  of 
Jefferson;  how,  then,  could  his  wife  be  indifferent  to 
it  ?  There  was  really  nothing  serious  to  quarrel  about 
in  the  home  affairs  of  the  country.  The  charge  of 
monarchical  tendencies  amounted  to  nothing;  the 
clear-headed  Oliver  Wolcott  wrote  that  he  could  not 
find  a  man  of  sense  who  seriously  believed  it;  and 
yet  Washington  was  abused  as  if  he  carried  a  crown 
in  his  pocket.  These  attacks  came  most  furiously 
from  the  poet  Freneau  in  his  National  Gazette,  es- 
tablished October  31,  1791;  and  Jefferson,  in  whose 
office  Freneau  was  translating  clerk,  declared  that 
this  newspaper  had  saved  the  Constitution,  which 
was  "galloping  fast  into  monarchy";  that  it  had 
"checked  the  career  of  the  Monocrats,"  and  the  like. 
Washington  must  have  chafed  all  the  more  under  these 
attacks  because  the  editor,  with  persistent  and  pain- 
ful courtesy,  sent  him  four  copies  of  every  issue — a 
refinement  of  cruelty  such  as  our  milder  times  can 
hardly  parallel. 

All  these  troubles  were  exasperated  by  the  arrival, 
on  April  9,  1793,  of  the  first  envoy  of  the  new  French 
republic,  M.  Genet.  He  was  received  with  a  display 
of  enthusiasm  that  might  have  turned  any  man's 
head,  and  his,  apparently,  needed  no  turning.  His 
journey  from  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  to  Phila- 
delphia was  like  the  reception  of  Lafayette;  all  the 
triumphant  rights  of  man  were  supposed  to  be  em- 
bodied in  him,  and  the  airs  he  took  upon  himself  seem 
now  incredible.  He  undertook  to  fit  out  privateers 
in  American  ports,  and  to  bring  prizes  into  those 
ports  for  condemnation  by  French  consuls ;  and  when 
Washington  checked  this  impertinence,  he  threatened 
to  appeal  from  Washington  to  the  people.     The  na- 

31S 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

tion  was  instantly  divided  into  two  parties,  and  what- 
ever extravagances  the  French  sympathizers  might 
commit  the  Federalists  doubled  them  in  imagination. 
They  sincerely  believed  that  all  sorts  of  horrors  were 
transacted  at  the  banquets  given  to  Genet;  that  the 
guests  in  turn  wore  the  red  revolutionary  cap— the 
bonnet  rouge;  that  a  roasted  pig  received  the  name 
of  the  slain  king  of  France,  and  that  the  severed 
head  was  offered  in  turn  to  each  guest,  who  exclaim- 
ed, theatrically,  "Tyrant!"  and  struck  it  with  his 
knife.  These  stories  may  have  been  chiefly  false, 
but  they  produced  as  much  effect  as  if  they  had  been 
true.  On  the  other  hand,  Genet  behaved  so  foolishly 
and  insolently  that  Jefferson  had  to  abandon  his 
cause.  "If  our  citizens,"  he  wrote,  "have  not  al- 
ready been  shedding  each  other's  blood,  it  is  not 
owing  to  the  moderation  of  Mr.  Genet."  Jefferson 
himself  assented  to  Washington's  proclamation  of 
neutrality  (April  22,  1793),  though  he  rejoiced  that 
it  was  not  issued  under  that  precise  name.  Indeed, 
throughout  the  excitement,  Jefferson  seems  to  have 
contributed  only  the  needful  influence  to  do  justice 
to  the  French  view  of  the  question,  and  was  less 
extravagant  in  that  way  than  Hamilton  on  the  other 
side. 

But  after  all  these  extravagances,  real  or  reputed, 
it  was  natural  that  every  outbreak  should  be  charged 
to  the  "democratic  societies."  Washington  thought 
that  they  instigated  the  Whiskey  Insurrection  which 
arose  in  Pennsylvania  in  1794  against  the  excise  laws 
—an  insurrection  which  denounced  such  laws  as  "  the 
horror  of  all  free  States,"  and  went  so  far  as  to  threat- 
en separation  from  the  Union.  It  was  Hamilton  who 
had  framed   the  law  which  caused  the  revolt,   and 

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OUR    COUNTRY'S    CRADLE 

Hamilton  contributed  the  admirable  suggestion  by 
which  it  was  quelled.  His  plan  was  to  call  out  so 
large  a  force  as  instantly  to  overawe  the  insurrection 
and  crush  it  without  firing  a  shot.  Washington  ac- 
cordingly summoned  out  13,000  militia,  and  the  work 
was  done.  Unfortunately,  it  led  to  the  reaction  which 
usually  follows  a  complete  strategic  success — people 
turn  round  and  say  that  there  never  was  any  danger. 
The  most  skilful  victories  even  in  war  are  the  blood- 
less ones,  but  it  is  apt  to  be  bloodshed  alone  that 
wins  laurels.  It  happened  thus  in  this  case.  Jeffer- 
son declared  the  affair  to  have  been  merely  a  riot, 
and  not  nearly  so  bad  as  the  excise  law  which  created 
it;  he  held  to  the  theory  which  he  had  announced 
during  Shays' s  rebellion,  that  an  occasional  popular 
commotion  was  a  good  remedy  for  too  much  govern- 
ment. 

Jay's  treaty  with  England  (November  19,  1794) 
was  the  turning-point  of  the  personal  popularity  of 
Washington.  From  that  time  a  large  and  increas- 
ing minority  opposed  the  President  with  all  the  bit- 
terness of  the  period— that  is,  furiously.  The  treaty 
secured  the  withdrawal  of  the  British  garrisons  from 
the  northwest,  and  it  guaranteed  payment  from  the 
British  treasury  for  all  illegal  captures— a  payment 
that  amounted  to  ten  millions  of  dollars.  So  far  it 
might  have  been  popular,  but  it  provided  also  for  the 
payment  of  all  debts  owed  before  the.  Re  volution  by 
Americans  to  British  subjects,  and  this  would  have 
been  enough  to  make  it  unpalatable.  But  it  also 
had  to  encounter  the  rising  sympathy  for  France, 
and  this  led  to  the  most  vehement  opposition.  The 
indignation  against  it  broke  out  in  mobs.  Jay  was 
burned  or  hanged  in  effigy  in  several  cities;  Adams 

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HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

was  in  one  case  hanged  beside  him,  with  a  purse  of 
English  guineas  in  his  hand;  and  the  treaty  itself 
was  burned  in  Philadelphia  by  a  mob  of  ten  thousand 
people,  before  the  windows  of  the  British  Minister. 
Hamilton,  in  speaking  for  it  at  a  public  meeting  in 
New  York,  was  assailed  by  a  volley  of  stones.  "  Gen- 
tlemen," he  said,  "if  you  use  such  strong  arguments, 
I  must  retire."  But  he  only  retired  to  write  a  series 
of  papers  in  defence  of  the  treaty,  which  was  ratified 
in  June,  1795,  by  just  the  needful  two -thirds  vote 
after  a  fortnight  of  discussion. 

We  think  of  those  times  as  purer  than  the  present ; 
yet  the  perennial  moaning  over  the  decline  of  the  re- 
public had  already  begun  in  the  first  decade  of  its 
existence.  Fauchet,  the  French  Minister  who  suc- 
ceeded Genet,  declared,  truly  or  falsely,  that  Ed- 
mund Randolph,  who  was  at  first  Attorney-general, 
but  had  now  succeeded  Jefferson  as  Secretary  of 
State,  had  come  to  him  and  asked  for  a  bribe  to  es- 
pouse the  French  side.  "Thus,"  said  the  indignant 
Frenchman,  "the  consciences  of  the  pretended  pa- 
triots of  America  have  already  their  prices.  What 
will  be  the  old  age  of  this  government  if  it  is  thus 
already  decrepit!"  And  as  to  political  violence,  the 
habitual  abuse  of  Washington  went  on  increasing; 
the  Democratic  Republicans  spoke  of  him  habitually 
in  their  private  meetings  as  "Montezuma";  they  al- 
lowed him  neither  uprightness,  nor  pecuniary  honesty, 
nor  military  ability,  nor  even  personal  courage.  He 
himself  wrote  that  every  act  of  his  administration 
was  tortured,  and  the  grossest  misrepresentations 
made  "in  such  exaggerated  and  indecent  terms  as 
could  scarcely  be  applied  to  a  Nero,  to  a  notorious 
defaulter,  or  even  to  a  common  pickpocket." 

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OUR    COUNTRY'S    CRADLE 

His  farewell  address  was  made  public  in  September, 
1796,  and  he  met  Congress  December  7th  for  the 
last  time.  The  electoral  votes,  as  counted  by  the 
Senate  in  the  following  February  (1797),  showed 
John  Adams,  of  Massachusetts,  to  have  the  highest 
number,  and  he  was  declared  President-elect;  while 
Jefferson,  who  had  the  next  number,  was  pronounced 
to  be  the  Vice-president-elect,  according  to  a  con- 
stitutional provision  since  altered.  On  his  last  day 
in  office  Washington  wrote  to  Knox  comparing  him- 
self to  "the  weary  traveller  who  sees  a  resting-place, 
and  is  bending  his  body  to  lean  thereon.  To  be  suf- 
fered to  do  this  in  peace,"  he  added,  "is  too  much  to 
be  endured  by  some."  Accordingly,  on  that  very  day 
a  Philadelphia  newspaper  dismissed  him  with  a  final 
tirade,  whose  wild  folly  is  worth  remembering  by  all 
who  think  that  political  virulence  is  on  the  increase : 

"  '  Lord,  now  lettest  Thou  Thy  servant  depart  in  peace,  for 
mine  eyes  have  seen  Thy  salvation!'  This  was  the  exclama- 
tion of  a  man  who  saw  a  flood  of  blessedness  breaking  in 
upon  mankind.  If  ever  there  was  a  time  that  allowed  this 
exclamation  to  be  repeated,  that  time  is  the  present.  The 
man  who  is  the  source  of  all  our  country's  misery  is  this 
day  reduced  to  the  rank  of  his  fellow  -  citizens,  and  has 
no  longer  the  power  to  multiply  the  woes  of  these  United 
States.  Now  more  than  ever  is  the  time  to  rejoice.  Every 
heart  which  feels  for  the  liberty  and  happiness  of  the  peo- 
ple must  now  beat  with  rapture  at  the  thought  that  this 
day  the  name  of  Washington  ceases  to  give  currency  to  in- 
justice and  to  legalize  corruption.  .  .  .  When  we  look  back 
upon  the  eight  years  of  Washington's  administration,  it 
strikes  us  with  astonishment  that  one  man  could  thus  poison 
the  principles  of  republicanism  among  our  enlightened  peo- 
ple, and  carry  his  designs  against  the  public  liberty  so  far 
as  to  endanger  its  very  existence.  Yet  such  is  the  fact,  and 
if  this  is  apparent  to  all,  this  day  should  form  a  jubilee  in 
the  United  States." 

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THE    EARLY    AMERICAN    PRESIDENTS 

AN  acute  foreign  observer  said  well,  in  the  days 
i  when  John  Adams  was  President,  that  there 
seemed  to  be  in  the  United  States  many  Englishmen, 
many  Frenchmen,  but  very  few  Americans.  The 
reason  was  that  the  French  Revolution  really  drew  a 
red-hot  ploughshare  through  the  history  of  America 
as  well  as  through  that  of  France.  It  not  merely 
divided  parties,  but  moulded  them :  gave  them  their 
demarcations,  their  watchwords,  and  their  bitterness. 
The  home  issues  were  for  a  time  subordinate,  collater- 
al ;  the  real  party  lines  were  established  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Atlantic. 

Up  to  the  time  when  the  Constitution  was  formed, 
it  is  curious  to  see  that  France  was  only  the  friend  of 
the  young  nation,  not  its  political  counsellor.  The 
proof  of  this  is  that,  in  the  debates  which  formed  the 
Constitution,  France  was  hardly  mentioned;  the  au- 
thorities, the  illustrations,  the  analogies,  were  almost 
all  English.  Yet  the  leading  statesmen  of  the  period 
— Franklin,  Jay,  Adams,  Jefferson — had  been  resi- 
dent in  Paris  as  diplomatists;  and  Hamilton  was  of 
French  descent  on  the  mother's  side.  France,  how- 
ever, gave  them  no  model  for  imitation ;  the  frame  of 
government,  where  it  was  not  English,  was  simply 
American.     A  few  years  more,  and  all  was  changed; 

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THE  EARLY  AMERICAN  PRESIDENTS 

in  America,  as  in  Europe,  the  French  Revolution  was 
the  absorbing  theme.  The  American  newspapers  of 
the  day  existed  mainly  to  give  information  about 
foreign  affairs;  and  they  really  gave  more  space  to 
France  than  to  their  own  country.  They  told  some- 
thing about  the  wrongs  of  the  French  people,  though 
few  besides  Jefferson  took  them  seriously  to  heart. 
They  told  a  great  deal  about  the  horrors  of  the  out- 
break, and  here  men  divided.  American  political 
parties  were  for  many  years  embittered  by  the  tra- 
ditions of  that  great  division. 

Those  who  had  always  distrusted  the  masses  of  the 
people  inevitably  began  to  distrust  them  more  than 
ever.  They  read  Burke's  Reflections  on  the  French 
Revolution,  they  read  Canning's  editorials,  and  they 
attributed  the  French  excesses  to  innate  depravity, 
to  atheism,  to  madness.  Let  the  people  have  its  own 
way,  they  argued,  and  it  will  always  wish  to  cut  off 
the  heads  of  the  better  classes  or  swing  them  up  to 
the  street-lantern.  Those  who  thus  reasoned  were 
themselves  the  better  classes,  in  the  ordinary  sense; 
they  were  the  clergy,  the  lawyers,  the  planters,  the 
merchants — the  men  who  had,  or  thought  they  had, 
the  largest  stake  in  the  country.  The  Frenchmen 
they  had  seen  were  the  young  men  of  rank  and  fort- 
une who  had  helped  America  to  fight  through  the 
Revolution  —  generous,  high-souled,  joyous  young 
soldiers,  of  whom  Lafayette  was  the  conspicuous 
type.  Of  the  same  class  were  the  Frenchmen  who 
had  visited  America  since  the  Revolution;  who  had 
been  pleased  with  everything  and  had  flattered  every- 
body. The  handsome  Count  Fersen,  who  had  charm- 
ed all  hearts  at  Newport,  was  the  very  man  who  had, 
in  the  disguise  of  a  coachman,  driven  the  French  King 

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HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

and  Queen  in  their  escape  from  Paris.  Lauzun,  the 
brilliant  commander  of  French  cavalry  under  Rocham- 
beau,  was  also  the  picturesque  hero  who  refused  to 
have  his  hands  tied  on  ascending  the  guillotine,  but 
said  gayly  to  the  executioner,  "We  are  both  French- 
men; we  shall  do  our  duty."  Who  could  help  sym- 
pathizing with  these  fine  young  fellows?  But  this 
revolutionist  in  the  red  cap,  this  Jacques  with  wood- 
en shoes,  these  knitting  women,  these  terrible  trico- 
teuses,  the  Federalists  had  not  seen;  and  doubtless 
the  nearer  they  had  seen  them  the  less  they  would 
have  liked  them.  Consequently,  like  Burke,  they 
" pitied  the  plumage,  but  forgot  the  dying  bird." 
To  them  everything  French  was  now  pernicious ;  the 
Reign  of  Terror  was  not  much  worse  than  was  the 
career  of  those  more  moderate  revolutionists  who  re- 
sisted that  terror  or  fell  beneath  it.  The  opinions 
of  this  party  were  best  represented  by  that  cele- 
brated periodical,  the  Anti-  Jacobin,  now  chiefly  re- 
membered by  Canning's  best -known  poem,  "The 
Needy  Knife-Grinder."  But  the  Anti-Jacobin  lashed 
every  grade  of  Frenchman  and  Frenchwoman  with 
equal  bitterness,  if  they  took  the  side  of  the  people; 
assailed  Madame  Roland  and  Madame  de  Stael  as 
coarsely  as  it  denounced  Robespierre  or  Danton.  The 
American  Federalists  held  the  same  attitude. 

To  look  below  the  surface  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, to  see  in  it  the  righting  of  a  vast  wrong,  to  find 
in  that  wrong  some  explanation  of  its  very  excesses, 
this  view — now  so  generally  accepted — was  confined 
to  a  very  few  of  the  leaders :  Jefferson,  Samuel  Adams, 
Albert  Gallatin.  Here,  as  is  usual,  the  reformer  found 
secret  affinities  with  the  demagogue.  It  is  easier  for 
the  demagogue  than  for  any  one  else  to  pose  for  a 

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THE    EARLY    AMERICAN    PRESIDENTS 

time  as  a  reformer,  and  even  to  be  mistaken  for  one ; 
and  on  the  other  hand  the  reformer  is  always  tempt- 
ed to  make  excuses  for  the  demagogue,  since  he  him- 
self has  usually  to  wage  war  against  the  respectable 
classes.  Some  men  were  Federalists  because  they 
were  high-minded,  others  because  they  were  narrow- 
minded;  while  the  more  far-sighted,  and  also  the 
less  scrupulous,  became  Democrats — or,  in  the  orig- 
inal name,  Republicans.  They  used  this  last  term 
not  in  the  rather  vague  sense  of  current  Ameri- 
can politics,  but  in  a  much  more  definite  manner. 
In  calling  themselves  Republicans,  they  sincerely  be- 
lieved that  nobody  else  wished  well  to  the  republic. 
Thus  the  party  lines  which  we  should  have  expected 
to  find  drawn  simply  on  American  questions  were  in 
fact  almost  wholly  controlled  by  European  politics. 
The  Federalists  were  in  sympathy  with  England ;  the 
Democrats,  or  Republicans,  with  France;  and  this 
determined  the  history  of  the  nation,  its  treaties  and 
its  parties,  through  a  series  of  administrations. 

The  Federalist  President-elect  was  John  Adams — 
a  man  of  great  pith  and  vigor,  whose  letters  and 
diaries  are  more  racy  than  those  of  any  man  of  that 
day,  though  his  more  elaborate  writings  are  apt  to 
be  prolix  and  dull,  like  those  of  the  others.  He  was 
a  self-made  man,  as  people  say,  and  one  who  had  a 
strong  natural  taste  for  rank  and  ceremony;  even 
having,  as  John  Randolph  complained,  "arms  em- 
blazoned on  the  'scutcheon  of  the  vice-regal  car- 
riage." The  more  he  held  to  this  aristocratic  posi- 
tion, the  more  people  remarked  his  original  want  of 
it ;  and  there  have  lived  within  half  a  century  in  Bos- 
ton old  ladies  who  still  habitually  spoke  of  him  as 
"that  cobbler's  son."     But  he  was  a  man,  moreover, 

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HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

of  extraordinary  sense  and  courage,  combined  with 
an  explosive  temper  and  a  decided  want  of  tact. 
He  had  at  first  the  public  sentiment  of  New  England 
behind  him,  and  a  tolerably  united  party.  Having 
been  Vice-president  under  Washington,  he  seemed 
to  be  the  natural  successor ;  and  the  peculiar  arrange- 
ment then  prevailing,  by  which  the  Vice-president 
was  not  voted  for  as  a  distinct  officer,  but  was  simply 
the  Presidential  candidate  who  stood  second  on  the 
list,  led  to  many  complications  of  political  manoeuvr- 
ing, the  result  of  which  was  that  John  Adams  had  7 1 
electoral  votes,  and  became  President,  while  Thomas 
Jefferson  had  68  votes,  and  took  the  next  place, 
greatly  to  his  discontent.  Adams  and  Jefferson  were 
quite  as  inappropriately  brought  together  in  execu- 
tive office  as  were  Jefferson  and  Hamilton  in  the 
cabinet  of  Washington. 

Abigail  Adams,  the  President's  wife,  was  undoubt- 
edly the  most  conspicuous  American  woman  of  her 
day,  whether  by  position  or  by  character.  When 
writing  to  her  husband  she  often  signed  herself 
"  Portia,"  in  accordance  with  a  stately  and  perhaps 
rather  high-flown  habit  of  the  period;  and  she  cer- 
tainly showed  qualities  which  would  have  done  hon- 
or to  either  the  Roman  or  Shakespearian  heroine  of 
that  name.  In  her  letters  we  see  her  thoroughly  re- 
vealed. While  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill  was  in 
progress,  she  wrote  that  it  was  "dreadful  but  glori- 
ous"; and  in  the  depression  of  the  battle  of  Long  Isl- 
and she  said,  "  If  all  America  is  to  be  ruined  and  un- 
done by  a  pack  of  cowards  and  knaves,  I  wish  to 
know  it,"  and  added,  "Don't  you  know  me  better 
than  to  think  me  a  coward?"  When,  first  among 
American  women,  she  represented  her  nation  at  the 

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THE  EARLY  AMERICAN  PRESIDENTS 

court  of  St.  James,  she  met  with  equal  pride  the  con- 
temptuous demeanor  of  Queen  Charlotte;  and  when 
her  husband  was  chosen  President,  she  wrote  to  him : 
"My  feelings  are  not  those  of  pride  or  ostentation 
upon  the  occasion;  they  are  solemnized  by  a  sense 
of  the  obligations,  the  important  truths  and  numer- 
ous duties,  connected  with  it."  When  finally,  after 
four  years,  he  failed  of  re-election,  she  wrote  to  her 
son:  "The  consequence  to  us  is  personally  that  we 
retire  from  public  life.  For  myself  and  family  I  have 
few  regrets.  ...  If  I  did  not  rise  with  dignity,  I  can 
at  least  fall  with  ease."  This  was  Abigail  Adams. 
In  person  she  was  distinguished  and  noble  rather 
than  beautiful,  yet  it  is  satisfactory  to  know  that 
when  she  was  first  presented  at  the  British  court  she 
wore  a  white  lutestring,  trimmed  with  white  crape, 
festooned  with  lilac  ribbon  and  mock  point-lace  over 
a  hoop  of  enormous  extent,  with  a  narrow  train  three 
yards  long,  looped  up  by  a  ribbon.  She  wore  treble 
lace  ruffles,  a  dress  cap  with  long  lace  lappets,  and 
two  white  plumes,  these  last  doubtless  soaring  straight 
into  the  air  above  her  head  in  the  extraordinary  style 
familiar  to  us  in  Gillray's  caricatures  of  that  period. 

It  was  in  those  days  no  very  agreeable  task  to  be 
the  wife  of  the  President.  Mrs.  Adams  has  left  on 
record  a  graphic  sketch  of  the  White  House,  where 
she  presided  for  three  months.  The  change  in  the 
seat  of  government  had  been  decided  upon  for  twelve 
years,  yet  the  building  was  still  a  vast,  unfinished 
barrack,  with  few  rooms  plastered,  no  main  stairway, 
not  a  bell  within,  not  a  fence  without ;  it  was  distress- 
ingly cold  in  winter,  while  the  Chief  Magistrate  of 
the  United  States  could  not  obtain  for  love  or  money 
a  man  to  cut  wood  for  him  in  the  forests  which  then 

325 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

surrounded  Washington.  From  Washington  to  Balti- 
more extended  an  almost  unbroken  growth  of  timber, 
varied  only  by  some  small  and  windowless  huts.  There 
could  as  yet  be  in  Washington  no  such  varied  com- 
panionship as  had  given  attraction  to  the  seat  of 
government  at  New  York  and  then  at  Philadelphia; 
yet  at  Georgetown  there  was  a  society  which  called 
itself  eminently  polite,  and  Mrs.  Adams  records  that 
she  returned  fifteen  calls  in  a  single  day. 

Adams  took  his  cabinet  from  his  predecessor;  it 
was  not  a  strong  one,  and  it  was  devoted  to  Hamil- 
ton, between  whom  and  the  new  President  there  was 
soon  a  divergence,  Hamilton  being  fond  of  power, 
and  Adams  having  a  laudable  purpose  to  command 
his  own  ship.  The  figure  of  speech  is  appropriate, 
for  he  plunged  into  a  sea  of  troubles,  mainly  created 
by  the  unreasonable  demands  of  the  French  govern- 
ment. The  French  "Directory,"  enraged  especially 
by  Jay's  treaty  with  England,  got  rid  of  one  Ameri- 
can Minister  by  remonstrance  and  drove  out  an- 
other with  contempt.  When  Adams  sent  three  special 
envoys,  they  were  expected  to  undertake  the  most 
delicate  negotiations  with  certain  semi-official  persons 
designated  in  their  published  correspondence  only  by 
the  letters  X,  Y,  Z.  The  plan  of  this  covert  inter- 
course came  through  the  private  secretary  of  M.  de 
Talleyrand,  then  French  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs ; 
and  the  impudence  of  these  three  letters  of  the  al- 
phabet went  so  far  as  to  propose  a  bribe  of  1,200,000 
francs  (some  $220,000)  to  be  paid  over  to  this  Min- 
ister. ' '  You  must  pay  money,  a  great  deal  of  money, ' ' 
remarked  Monsieur  Y  (//  faut  de  V  argent,  beaitcoup 
de  V argent).  The  secret  of  these  names  was  kept, 
but  the  diplomatic  correspondence  was  made  public, 

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THE  EARLY  AMERICAN  PRESIDENTS 

and  created  much  wrath  in  Europe  as  well  as  in 
America.  Moreover,  American  vessels  were  constant- 
ly attacked  by  France,  and  yet  Congress  refused  to 
arm  its  own  ships.  At  last  the  insults  passed  beyond 
bearing,  and  it  was  at  this  time  that  ''Millions  for 
defence,  not  one  cent  for  tribute,"  first  became  a 
proverbial  phrase,  having  been  originally  used  by 
Charles  C.  Pinckney,  who,  after  having  been  expelled 
from  France,  was  sent  back  again  as  one  of  the  three 
envoys. 

Then,  with  tardy  decision,  the  Republicans  yielded 
to  the  necessity  of  action,  and  the  Federal  party  took 
the  lead.  War  was  not  formally  proclaimed,  but  trea- 
ties with  France  were  declared  to  be  no  longer  binding. 
An  army  was  ordered  to  be  created,  with  Washing- 
ton as  lieutenant-general  and  Hamilton  as  second  in 
command;  and  the  President  was  authorized  to  ap- 
point a  Secretary  of  the  Navy  and  to  build  twelve 
new  ships-of-war.  Before  these  were  ready,  naval 
hostilities  had  actually  begun;  and  Commodore  Trux- 
tun,  in  the  U.  S.  frigate  Constellation,  captured  a 
French  frigate  in  West  Indian  waters  (February  9, 
1799),  and  afterwards  silenced  another,  which  how- 
ever escaped.  Great  was  the  excitement  over  these 
early  naval  successes  of  the  young  nation.  Merchant- 
ships  were  authorized  to  arm  themselves,  and  some 
three  hundred  acted  upon  this  authority.  It  is  to 
this  period,  and  not,  as  is  commonly  supposed,  to  that 
of  the  Revolution,  that  Robert  Treat  Paine's  song 
"Adams  and  Liberty"  belongs.  The  result  of  it  all 
was  that  France  yielded.  Talleyrand,  the  very  Min- 
ister who  had  inspired  the  insults,  now  disavowed 
them,  and  pledged  his  government  to  receive  any 
Minister  the  United  States  might  send.     The  Presi- 

327 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

dent,  in  the  most  eminently  courageous  act  of  his 
life,  took  the  responsibility  of  again  sending  ambassa- 
dors; and  did  this  without  even  consulting  his  cabi- 
net, which  would,  as  he  well  knew,  oppose  it.  They 
were  at  once  received,  and  all  danger  of  war  with 
France  was  at  an  end. 

This  bold  stroke  separated  the  President  perma- 
nently from  at  least  half  of  his  own  party,  since  the 
Federalists  did  not  wish  for  peace  with  France.  His 
course  would  have  given  him  a  corresponding  in- 
crease of  favor  from  the  other  side,  but  for  the  great 
mistake  the  Federalists  had  made  in  passing  certain 
laws,  especially  the  "Alien"  law  and  the  "Sedition" 
law ;  the  first  of  these  giving  the  President  power  to 
order  any  dangerous  alien  out  of  the  country,  and  the 
second  making  it  a  penal  oflence  to  write  anything 
false,  scandalous,  or  malicious  against  the  President  or 
Congress.  It  was  held,  most  justly,  that  this  last  law 
was  directly  opposed  to  the  Constitution,  which  had 
been  so  amended  as  to  guarantee  freedom  to  the  press. 
Looked  at  from  this  distance,  it  seems  to  have  been 
one  of  those  measures  which  inevitably  destroy  a 
party;  and  the  Federalists  certainly  committed  sui- 
cide when  they  passed  it.  It  is  clear  that  if  it  had 
stood,  their  own  ablest  newspapers  four  years  after 
— Dennie's  Portfolio,  for  instance — might  have  seen 
their  proprietors  imprisoned.  These  laws  led  to  ac- 
tion almost  equally  extreme  on  the  other  side;  the 
Republicans,  powerless  in  Congress,  fell  back  on  their 
State  legislatures,  and  Kentucky  and  Virginia  pass- 
ed resolutions— draughted  respectively  by  Jefferson 
and  Madison — which  went  so  near  secession  as  to  be 
quoted  on  that  side  at  a  later  day.  Kentucky  dis- 
tinctly resolved  in  1799  that  any  State  might  right- 


THE    EARLY    AMERICAN    PRESIDENTS 

fully  nullify  any  act  of  Congress  which  it  regarded  as 
unconstitutional. 

Thus  the  bitterness  grew  worse  and  worse,  till 
Adams  dismissed  from  his  cabinet  the  friends  of 
Hamilton,  calling  them  a  "  British  faction."  ^  Ham- 
ilton, in  turn,  intrigued  against  Adams,  and  in  1800 
the  vote  of  South  Carolina  turned  the  scale  in  favor 
of  the  Republican  electors.  Jefferson  and  Burr,  the 
two  Republican  nominees,  had  an  equal  number  of 
votes— 73 ;  Adams  having  65,  Pinckney  64,  and  Jay  1. 
There  was  no  choice,  and  the  decision  then  went  to 
the  House  of  Representatives,  which  took  six  days 
to  make  its  election,  during  which  time  the  Constitu- 
tion underwent  such  a  party  strain  as  has  only  once 
been  equalled  since  that  period.  It  ended  in  the 
election  of  Thomas  Jefferson  as  President  and  of 
Aaron  Burr  as  Vice-president,  and  on  March  4,  1801, 
they  were  sworn  into  office. 

On  the  very  day  of  his  inauguration  Jefferson  took 
a  step  towards  what  he  called  simplicity,  and  what 
his  opponents  thought  vulgarity.  The  story  that, 
instead  of  driving  with  a  coach-and-six  to  be  inau- 
gurated, the  new  President  rode  on  horseback  to  the 
Capitol,  without  even  a  servant,  tied  his  horse  to 
the  fence,  and  walked  in,  has  been  discredited^  but 
such  an  incident  would  have  been  characteristic. 
In  the  same  way,  thenceforward,  instead  of  going  with 
a  state  procession,  at  the  opening  of  each  Congress,  to 
read  his  message  in  person,  as  had  hitherto  been  the 
custom,  he  sent  it  in  writing.  He  would  have  no 
especial  levees  nor  invited  guests,  but  was  accessible 
to  any  one  at  any  hour.  He  was  so  unwilling  to  have 
his  birthday  celebrated  that  he  concealed  it  as  much 
as  possible.     These  ways  were  criticised  as  those  of  a 

329 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

demagogue.  The  President  was  reproached  with  a 
desire  to  conciliate  the  mob,  or,  as  it  was  then  some- 
times called — as,  for  instance,  in  Mrs.  Adams's  letters 
— the  "  mobility."  His  reason  for  sending  a  message, 
according  to  that  stout  Federalist  William  Sullivan, 
was  because  a  speech  could  be  answered  and  a  mes- 
sage could  not ;  although  Sullivan  asserts,  in  almost 
the  next  sentence,  that  Congress  was  utterly  sub- 
servient to  him,  and  it  could  therefore  have  made 
no  difference.  The  discontinuance  of  formal  levees 
is  called  by  Sullivan  "the  abolition  of  all  official  dig- 
nity," and  "descending  to  the  lowest  level." 

Dennie's  Portfolio,  the  best  newspaper  that  had  yet 
appeared  in  the  United  States,  contained,  August  18, 
1804,  among  eulogies  of  the  poems  of  Burns  and 
burlesques  upon  the  early  lyrical  effusions  of  Words- 
worth, an  imaginary  diary,  supposed  to  have  been 
picked  up  near  the  White  House  in  the  previous  Feb- 
ruary. In  this  the  President  was  made  to  say:  "  Or- 
dered my  horse — never  ride  with  a  servant — looks 
proud — mob  doesn't  like  it — must  gull  the  boobies. 
Adams  wouldn't  bend  so — would  rather  lose  his  place 
— knew  nothing  of  the  world."  In  another  place  he 
describes  himself  as  meeting  a  countryman  who  took 
him  for  a  Virginia  overseer,  and  who  talked  politics. 
The  countryman  asked  him  to  name  one  man  of  real 
character  in  the  Democratic  party.  The  President, 
after  some  stammering,  suggested  Jefferson,  on  which 
the  countryman  burst  into  a  broad  laugh,  and  asked 
him  to  enumerate  his  virtues — would  he  begin  with 
his  religion,  chastity,  courage,1  or  honesty? — on 
which  the  President  indignantly  rode  away.  "Had 
he  been  as  little  as  Sammy  H.  Smith,"  he  adds,  "I 
think  I  should  have  struck  him."     Ever  since  Jeffer- 

33o 


THE    EARLY    AMERICAN    PRESIDENTS 

son's  career  as  Governor  of  Virginia,  the  charge  of 
personal  cowardice  had  been  unreasonably  familiar. 

The  fictitious  diary  also  contains  some  indecorous 
references  to  a  certain  " black  Sally,"  a  real  or  im- 
aginary personage  of  that  day  whose  companionship 
was  thought  discreditable  to  the  President;  also  to 
the  undoubted  personal  slovenliness  of  the  Chief 
Magistrate — a  point  in  which  he  showed  an  almost 
studied  antagonism  to  the  scrupulous  proprieties  of 
Washington.  When  Merry,  the  newly  appointed 
British  ambassador,  went  in  official  costume  to  be 
presented  to  the  President  at  an  hour  previously  ap- 
pointed, he  found  himself,  by  his  own  narrative,  "in- 
troduced to  a  man  as  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  not  merely  in  an  undress,  but  actually  stand- 
ing in  slippers  down  at  the  heels,  and  both  pantaloons, 
coat,  and  underclothes  indicative  of  utter  slovenliness 
and  indifference  to  appearance,  and  in  a  state  of  neg- 
ligence actually  studied."  The  Minister  went  away 
with  the  very  natural  conviction  that  the  whole  scene 
was  prepared  and  intended  as  an  insult,  not  to  him- 
self, but  to  the  sovereign  whom  he  represented. 

Merry's  inference  was  probably  quite  unjust.  A 
man  may  be  habitually  careless  about  his  costume 
without  meaning  any  harm  by  it ;  and  the  pre-emi- 
nent demagogue  of  the  French  Revolution,  Robes- 
pierre, always  appeared  exquisitely  dressed,  and  wore 
a  fresh  bouquet  every  day.  Yet  all  these  points  of 
costume  or  propriety  were  then  far  weightier  matters 
than  we  can  now  conceive.  The  habits  of  the  last 
century  in  respect  to  decorum  were  just  receding; 
men  were — for  better  or  worse — ceasing  to  occupy 
themselves  about  personal  externals,  and  the  "cus- 
tomary suit  of  solemn  black"  was  only  just  coming 

33i 


HISTORY    OP    THE    UNITED    STATES 

into  vogue.  The  old  regime  was  dying,  and  its  dis- 
appearance was  as  conspicuous  in  England  as  in 
France,  in  America  as  in  England.  This  is  easily 
illustrated. 

If  we  were  to  read  in  some  old  collection  of  faded 
letters  a  woman's  animated  description  of  a  country 
visit  paid  to  one  who  seemed  the  counterpart  of  Ad- 
dison's Sir  Roger  de  Cover  ley,  we  should  naturally 
assume  that  the  date  and  address  of  the  letter  must 
be  very  far  away  in  space  and  time.  Suppose  that 
the  narrator  should  tell  us  of  a  fine  country-house 
surrounded  by  lofty  elms  forming  two  avenues,  the 
one  leading  to  the  high-road,  the  other  to  the  village 
church.  There  are  family  portraits  in  the  hall, 
bookcase  containing  the  first  edition  of  the  Spectator ', 
and  a  buffet  of  old  plate  and  rare  china.  The  guest 
remains  over  Sunday,  and  her  host,  wearing  wig  and 
cocked  hat  and  red  cloak,  escorts  her  down  the  avenue 
of  elms  through  the  rural  church-yard  to  the  village 
church.  At  every  step  they  pass  villagers  who  make 
profound  obeisance,  and  at  the  conclusion  of  the  ser- 
vice the  whole  congregation  remains  standing  until 
this  ancient  gentleman  and  his  friends  have  passed 
down  the  broad  aisle.  Who  would  not  fancy  this  a 
scene  from  some  English  hamlet  in  the  days  of  Queen 
Anne  ?  Yet  it  all  took  place  in  the  last  century,  and 
in  the  quiet  village  of  Harvard,  Massachusetts,  little 
more  than  thirty  miles  from  Boston,  and  noted  as 
the  abode  of  a  little  Shaker  community,  and  the  scene 
of  Howells's  Undiscovered  Country.  The  narrator 
was  the  late  Mrs.  Josiah  Quincy,  and  her  host  was 
Henry  Bromfield,  elder  brother  of  the  well-known 
benefactor  of  the  Boston  Athenaeum.  He  was  simply 
a  " survival"  of  the  old  way  of  living.     He  spoke  of 

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THE    EARLY    AMERICAN    PRESIDENTS 

State  Street  as  King  Street  and  Summer  Street  as 
Seven-star  Lane,  and  his  dress  and  manners  were  like 
his  phrases.  Such  survivals  were  still  to  be  found, 
here  and  there  all  over  the  country,  at  the  precise 
time  when  Jefferson  became  President  and  shocked 
Merry  with  his  morning  slippers  and  Sullivan  by 
opening  his  doors  to  all  the  world. 

For  the  rest,  Jefferson's  way  of  living  in  Washing- 
ton exhibited  a  profuse  and  rather  slovenly  hospital- 
ity, which  at  last  left  him  deeply  in  debt.  He  kept 
open  house,  had  eleven  servants  (slaves)  from  his 
plantation,  besides  a  French  cook  and  steward  and 
an  Irish  coachman.  His  long  dining-room  was  crowd- 
ed every  day,  according  to  one  witness,  who  tested 
its  hospitality  for  sixteen  days  in  succession;  it  was 
essentially  a  bachelor  establishment,  he  being  then  a 
widower,  and  we  hear  little  of  ladies  among  his  visit- 
ors. There  was  no  etiquette  at  these  great  dinners; 
they  sat  down  at  four  and  talked  till  midnight.  The 
city  of  Washington  was  still  a  frontier  settlement,  in 
that  phase  of  those  outposts  when  they  consist  of 
many  small  cabins  and  one  hotel  at  which  everybody 
meets.  The  White  House  was  the  hotel;  there  was 
no  " society"  anywhere  else,  because  no  other  dwell- 
ing had  a  drawing-room  large  enough  to  receive  it. 
Pennsylvania  Avenue  was  still  an  abyss  of  yellow 
mud,  on  which  nobody  could  walk  and  where  car- 
riages were  bemired.  Gouverneur  Morris,  of  New 
York,  described  Washington  as  the  best  city  in  the 
world  for  a  future  residence.  "We  want  nothing 
here,"  he  said,  "but  houses,  cellars,  kitchens,  well- 
informed  men,  amiable  women,  and  other  little  trifles 
of  this  kind,  to  make  our  city  perfect." 

Besides  new  manners,  the  new  President  urged  new 

333 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

measures;  he  would  pay  off  the  public  debt,  which 
was  very  well,  though  the  main  instrument  by  which 
it  was  to  be  paid  was  the  Treasury  system  created  by 
Hamilton.  But  to  aid  in  doing  this,  he  would  reduce 
the  army  and  navy  to  their  lowest  point,  which  was 
not  so  well,  although  he  covered  this  reduction  in  the 
case  of  the  army  by  calling  it — in  a  letter  to  Nathaniel 
Macon — ' '  a  chaste  reformation. ' '  He  pardoned  those 
convicted  under  the  Alien  and  Sedition  laws,  and  he 
procured  the  removal  of  those  officers  appointed  by 
President  Adams  at  the  last  moment,  and  called 
"Midnight  Judges,"  this  being  accomplished  by  a 
repeal  of  the  law  creating  them.  This  repeal  was  an 
act  which  seemed  to  the  Federalists  unconstitutional, 
and  its  passage  was  their  last  great  defeat.  Under 
Jefferson's  leadership  the  period  of  fourteen  years  of 
residence  necessary  for  naturalization  was  reduced  to 
five  years.  He  sent  Lewis  and  Clark  to  penetrate 
the  vast  regions  west  of  the  Mississippi,  and  encour- 
aged Astor  to  found  a  settlement  upon  the  Pacific 
coast.  The  Constitution  was  so  amended  as  to  pro- 
vide for  the  Presidential  election  in  its  present  form. 
The  President's  hostility  could  not  touch  the  Bank 
of  the  United  States,  as  established  by  Hamilton,  for 
it  was  to  exist  by  its  charter  till  1811 ;  the  excise  law 
was  early  discontinued;  the  tariff  question  had  not 
yet  become  serious,  the  tendency  being,  however,  to 
an  increase  of  duties.  Slavery  was  occasionally  dis- 
cussed by  pamphleteers.  The  officials  of  the  civil 
service  had  not  grown  to  be  a  vast  army :  instead  of 
fifty  thousand,  there  were  then  but  five  thousand, 
and  of  those  Jefferson  removed  but  thirty-nine.  Yet 
even  this  mild  degree  of  personal  interference  was 
severely    criticised,    for    party    bitterness    had    not 

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THE    EARLY    AMERICAN    PRESIDENTS 

abated.  Violent  squibs  and  handbills  were  still  pub- 
lished; peaceful  villages  were  divided  against  them- 
selves. The  late  Catharine  Sedgwick,  whose  father 
was  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  says 
that  in  a  New  England  town,  where  she  lived  in 
childhood,  the  gentry  who  resided  at  one  end  were 
mainly  Federalists,  and  the  poorer  citizens  at  the 
other  end  were  Democrats.  The  travelling  agent  for 
the  exchange  of  political  knowledge  was  a  certain 
aged  horse,  past  service,  and  turned  out  to  graze  in 
the  village  street.  He  would  be  seen  peacefully  pac- 
ing one  way  in  the  morning,  his  sides  plastered  with 
Jeffersonian  squibs,  and  he  would  return  at  night  with 
these  effaced  by  Federalist  manifestoes. 

Handbills  and  caricatures  have  alike  disappeared; 
but  one  of  the  best  memorials  of  the  Jeffersonian  side 
of  the  controversy  is  to  be  found  in  a  very  spicy  cor- 
respondence carried  on  in  1807  between  John  Adams 
and  Mercy  Warren,  and  first  published  in  the  cen- 
tennial volume  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  So- 
ciety. Mercy  Warren  was  a  woman  of  rare  ability 
and  character,  the  sister  of  James  Otis,  the  wife  of 
General  James  Warren,  and  the  author  of  a  history 
of  the  American  Revolution.  John  Adams,  reading 
this  book  after  his  retirement  from  office,  took  offence 
at  certain  phrases,  and  corresponded  with  her  at 
great  length  about  them,  showing  in  advancing  years 
an  undiminished  keenness  of  mind  and  only  an  in- 
crease of  touchy  egotism.  He  makes  it,  for  instance, 
a  subject  of  sincere  indignation  when  the  lady  in  one 
case  speaks  of  Franklin  and  Adams  instead  of  Adams 
and  Franklin.  Mrs.  Warren,  on  her  side,  shows  to 
the  greatest  advantage,  keeps  her  temper,  and  gives 
some  keen  home-thrusts.     She  makes  it  clear,  in  this 

335 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

correspondence,  how  strongly  and  indeed  justly  a 
portion  of  the  most  intelligent  people  of  Adams's 
own  State  dreaded  what  she  calls  his  "  marked  and 
-uniform  preference  to  monarchic  usages";  she  brings 
him  to  the  admission  that  he  hates  "democratic" 
government,  and  likes  better  such  republicanism  as 
that  of  Holland — a  nation  which,  as  he  himself  says, 
"has  no  idea  of  any  republic  but  an  aristocracy" — 
and  that  he  counts  even  England  a  republic,  since  a 
republic  is  merely  "  a  government  of  more  than  one." 
She  even  quotes  against  him  his  own  words,  uttered 
in  moments  of  excited  impulse,  recognizing  mon- 
archy as  the  probable  destiny  of  the  United  States. 
But  the  most  striking  fact,  after  all,  is  that  she,  a  re- 
fined and  cultivated  woman,  accustomed  to  the  best 
New  England  society  of  her  time,  is  found  dissenting 
wholly  from  the  Federalist  view  of  Jefferson.  "  I 
never  knew,"  she  bravely  says,  in  answer  to  a  sneer 
from  Mr.  Adams,  "that  'my  philosophical  friend' 
Mr.  Jefferson  was  afraid  to  do  his  duty  in  any  instance. 
But  this  I  know — he  has  dared  to  do  many  things 
for  his  country  for  which  posterity  will  probably  bless 
his  memory;  and  I  hope  he  will  yet,  by  his  wisdom, 
justice,  moderation,  and  energy,  long  continue  the 
blessings  of  peace  in  our  country,  and  strengthen  the 
republican  system  to  which  he  has  uniformly  ad- 
hered." Such  a  tribute  from  a  woman  like  Mercy 
Warren — a  woman  then  nearly  eighty  years  old,  but 
still  showing  unimpaired  those  mental  powers  of 
which  John  Adams  had  before  spoken  in  terms  of  al- 
most extravagant  praise — is  entitled  to  count  for 
something  against  the  bitterness  of  contemporary 
politicians. 

There  were  now  sixteen  States,  Vermont  (1791), 

336 


THE    EARLY    AMERICAN    PRESIDENTS 

Kentucky  (1792),  Tennessee  (1796)  having  been  add- 
ed to  the  original  thirteen.  With  these  was  soon  as- 
sociated Ohio  (1802),  and  then  no  other  was  added 
until  a  vast  acquisition  of  territory  made  it  neces- 
sary. This  was  the  province  of  Louisiana,  which  was 
obtained  by  Jefferson  through  one  of  those  strokes 
of  glaring  inconsistency  which  his  opponents  called 
trick  and  his  admirers  statesmanship.  Monroe  had 
been  sent  to  France  to  buy  the  Floridas  and  the  isl- 
and of  New  Orleans,  but  he  went  beyond  his  instruc- 
tions, and  paid  fifteen  millions  (April  30,  1803)  for  all 
the  vast  region  then  called  Louisiana,  comprising  the 
island  of  New  Orleans  and  all  the  continent  west  of 
the  Mississippi  River  between  the  British  possessions 
and  what  was  then  Mexico.  The  territory  thus  ob- 
tained was  afterwards  assumed  to  have  extended  to 
the  Pacific  Ocean,  although  this  was  a  claim  subject 
to  much  doubt.  It  was  a  most  important  acquisition 
which  more  than  doubled  the  original  area  of  the 
United  States,  and  saved  it  from  being  hemmed  in 
between  English  Canada  and  French  Florida.  But 
here  was  a  test  of  those  rigid  doctrines  with  which 
Jeflerson  was  identified — of  State  rights  and  the  strict 
construction  of  the  Constitution.  If  the  resolutions 
which  he  had  drawn  up  for  the  State  of  Kentucky  were 
true,  then  the  purchase  of  Louisiana  was  wrong,  for 
it  was  the  exercise  of  a  power  not  given  by  the  Con- 
stitution, and  it  strengthened  the  nation  enormously 
at  the  expense  of  the  original  States.  Jeflerson  sus- 
tained it  simply  on  the  ground  that  the  people  needed 
it,  and  if  they  did  so,  a  constitutional  amendment 
would  set  all  right.  In  other  words,  he  violated 
what  he  himself  had  declared  to  be  law,  and  suggested 
that  a  new  law  be  passed  to  confirm  his  action.     The 

337 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

new  law — in  the  shape  of  an  amendment  to  the  Con- 
stitution— was,  in  fact,  prepared,  but  never  even  offer- 
ed, inasmuch  as  the  popular  voice  ratified  the  purchase. 
Thus  a  precedent  was  created — that  of  the  annexa- 
tion of  new  territory — which  was  in  accordance  with 
Jefferson's  immediate  policy,  but  was  fatal  to  his  prin- 
ciples. The  acquisition  of  Louisiana  aided  greatly  in 
bringing  about  just  that  which  he  had  opposed,  the 
subordination  of  the  States  to  the  nation. 

These  things  would  have  made  enough  of  party 
bitterness,  but  what  added  to  it  was  that  politics  still 
turned  largely  on  European  politics,  and  every  fresh 
foreign  newspaper  added  to  the  democratic  flame. 
It  was  now  France  with  which  a  treaty  was  to  be 
made,  and  the  debate  ran  almost  as  high  as  when 
Jay  had  negotiated  with  England,  only  that  the  ar- 
guments of  the- disputants  were  now  reversed.  But 
here,  as  in  everything  during  Jefferson's  earlier  pe- 
riod, success  awaited  him.  The  French  treaty  was  at 
length  ratified ;  the  Federalists  were  defeated  all  along 
the  line.  At  the  end  of  Jefferson's  first  term  they 
were  overwhelmingly  beaten  in  the  Presidential  elec- 
tion, carrying  only  Connecticut  and  Delaware,  with 
two  electors  in  Maryland — 14  electoral  votes  in  all. 
Their  unsuccessful  candidates  were  Charles  C.  Pinck- 
ney  and  Rufus  King;  the  successful  ones  were  Thomas 
Jefferson,  of  Virginia,  and  George  Clinton,  of  New 
York,  both  having  162  electoral  votes,  and  Clinton 
taking  the  place  of  Aaron  Burr,  the  most  brilliant 
man  of  his  time,  who  had  now  fallen  from  all  public 
respect  by  his  way  of  life,  had  made  himself  odious 
by  killing  Hamilton  in  a  duel,  and  was  destined  to 
come  near  conviction  for  treason  through  his  project 
of  setting  up  a  separate  government  at  the  South- 

33* 


THE    EARLY    AMERICAN    PRESIDENTS 

west.  The  new  President  and  Vice-president  were 
sworn  into  office  March  4,  1805.  They  had  behind 
them  a  strong  majority  in  each  House  of  Congress, 
and  henceforth  the  Federalist  party  was  only  a  mi- 
nority, able  and  powerful,  but  destined  to  death. 

Under  the  new  administration  the  controlling  effect 
of  European  strife  was  more  and  more  felt  in  Ameri- 
can affairs.  Napoleon's  "Decrees"  and  the  British 
"Orders  in  Council"  were  equally  disastrous  to  the 
commerce  of  the  United  States;  and  both  nations 
claimed  the  right  to  take  seamen  out  of  United  States 
vessels.  "England,"  said  Jefferson,  "seems  to  have 
become  a  den  of  pirates  and  France  a  den  of  thieves." 
There  was  trouble  with  Spain  also,  backed  by  France, 
about  the  eastern  boundaries  of  Louisiana.  There 
was  renewed  demand  for  a  navy,  but  the  President 
would  only  consent  to  the  building  of  certain  little 
gun-boats,  much  laughed  at  then  and  ever  since. 
They  were  to  cost  less  than  ten  thousand  dollars 
apiece,  were  to  be  kept  on  land  under  cover,  and  to 
be  launched  whenever  they  were  needed,  like  the 
boats  of  our  life-saving  service;  with  these  the  fleets 
which  had  fought  under  Nelson  were  to  be  resisted. 
Yet  a  merely  commercial  retaliation  was  favored 
by  Jefferson;  and  an  act  was  passed  to  punish  Eng- 
land by  the  prohibition  of  certain  English  goods.  A 
treaty  with  that  nation  was  made,  but  was  rejected 
by  the  President,  and  all  tended  to  increase  the  bitter- 
ness of  feeling  between  the  two  nations.  In  June, 
1807,  the  British  frigate  Leopard  took  four  seamen 
by  force  from  the  United  States  frigate  Chesapeake. 
"  Never  since  the  battle  of  Lexington,"  said  Jefferson, 
"  have  I  seen  this  country  in  such  a  state  of  exaspera- 
tion as  at  present." 

339 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Then  came  that  great  political  convulsion,  the 
Embargo  Act  (December  22,  1807),  prohibiting  all 
commerce  with  all  foreign  countries,  and  thus  in- 
stantly crushing  all  foreign  trade  which  the  two  great 
European  contestants  had  left.  It  kindled  all  the  fires 
of  hostility  between  the  Federalists  and  Republicans 
— who  had  now  fairly  accepted  the  name  of  Democrats, 
a  name  borrowed  from  France,  and  fairly  forced  on 
them  by  their  opponents.  The  act  brought  ruin  to 
so  many  households  that  it  might  well  be  at  least 
doubted  whether  it  brought  good  to  any.  The  very 
children  of  New  England  rose  up  against  it,  in  the 
person  of  Bryant,  who,  when  a  boy  of  thirteen,  wrote 
in  opposition  to  it  his  first  elaborate  lay.  It  was  be- 
lieved by  the  Federalists  to  be  aimed  expressly  at  the 
eastern  States,  yet  John  Quincy  Adams,  Senator  from 
Massachusetts,  supported  it,  and  then  resigned,  his 
course  being  disapproved  by  his  legislature.  He 
it  was,  however,  who  informed  the  President  at  last 
that  the  embargo  could  be  endured  no  longer,  and 
got  it  modified,  in  1809,  so  as  to  apply  only  to  Eng- 
land and  France.  Jefferson  consented  reluctantly 
even  to  this  degree  of  pressure,  but  he  wrote,  looking 
back  upon  the  affair  in  1816,  "I  felt  the  foundations 
of  the  government  shaken  under  my  feet  by  the  New 
England  township";  and  he  always  urged  thencefor- 
ward that  the  town  system  organized  the  voice  of  the 
people  in  a  way  with  which  no  unwieldy  county  or- 
ganization, such  as  prevailed  at  the  South,  could 
compete.  Yet  all  but  the  commercial  States  sus- 
tained the  embargo,  and  the  Federalist  party  was 
left  a  broken  and  hopeless  minority.  Jefferson  re- 
mained strong  in  popularity.  His  second  term  had 
secured  a  triumphant  end  to  the  long  contest  with 

34o 


THE    EARLY    AMERICAN    PRESIDENTS 

Tripoli,  whose  insolent  claims  were  checked  by  the 
successes  of  Decatur  and  by  a  treaty  (1805).  An 
act  had  also  been  passed  forever  prohibiting  the 
African  slave-trade  after  January  1,  1808.  Jeffer- 
son was  urged  to  become  for  a  third  time  a  candidate 
for  the  Presidency,  but  wisely  declined  in  favor  of 
his  friend  Madison.  In  the  election  of  1808,  James 
Madison,  of  Virginia,  had  122  votes,  C.  C.  Pinckney 
47,  and  George  Clinton  6,  Mr.  Madison  being  there- 
fore elected;  while  on  the  vote  for  Vice-president 
George  Clinton  had  a  smaller  majority.  The  third 
Chief  Magistrate  of  the  United  States  thus  retired  to 
private  life  after  a  career  which  has  influenced  Ameri- 
can institutions  to  this  day  more  profoundly  than 
that  of  any  other  President  unless  it  be  Jackson. 

Jefferson  was  a  man  full  of  thoughts  and  of  studi- 
ous purposes ;  trustful  of  the  people,  distrustful  of  the 
few ;  a  generous  friend,  but  a  vehement  and  unscru- 
pulous foe;  not  so  much  deliberately  false  as  without 
a  clear  sense  of  truth;  courageous  for  peace,  but 
shrinking  and  vacillating  in  view  of  war;  ignorant  of 
his  own  limitations ;  as  self-confident  in  financial  and 
commercial  matters,  of  which  he  knew  little,  as  in 
respect  to  the  principles  of  republican  government, 
about  which  he  showed  more  foresight  than  any  man 
of  his  time.  He  may  have  underrated  the  dangers 
to  which  the  nation  might  be  exposed  from  igno- 
rance and  vice,  but  he  never  yielded,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  the  cowardice  of  culture;  he  never  relaxed 
his  faith  in  the  permanence  of  popular  government 
or  in  the  high  destiny  of  man. 

Meanwhile  John  Adams,  on  his  farm  in  Quincy, 
had  been  superintending  his  haymakers  with  some- 
thing as  near  to  peace  of  mind  as  a  deposed  President 

34i 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

can  be  expected  to  attain.  He  was  not  a  person  of 
eminent  humility,  nor  is  it  usually  agreeable  to  a  pub- 
lic man  when  his  correspondents  cease  to  be  count- 
ed by  the  thousand  and  his  letters  shrink  to  two  a 
week.  His  high-minded  wife,  more  cordially  accept- 
ing the  situation,  wrote  with  sincere  satisfaction  of 
skimming  milk  in  her  dairy  at  five  o'clock  in  the 
morning.  Each  had  perhaps  something  to  say,  when 
Jefferson  was  mentioned,  about  "Caesar  with  a  Sen- 
ate at  his  heels,"  but  it  did  not  prevent  the  old  friend- 
ship with  Caesar  from  reviving  in  later  life.  Jeffer- 
son had  written  to  Washington  long  before,  that  even 
Adams's  "  apostasy  to  hereditary  monarchy  and 
nobility"  had  not  alienated  them;  Adams  saw  in 
Jefferson,  as  time  went  on,  the  friend  and  even  po- 
litical adviser  of  his  own  son.  Old  antagonisms  faded ; 
old  associations  grew  stronger ;  and  the  two  aged  men 
floated  on,  like  two  ships  becalmed  at  nightfall  that 
drift  together  into  port  and  cast  anchor  side  by  side. 


XV 
THE    SECOND    WAR    FOR    INDEPENDENCE 

JEFFERSON'S  period  of  office  lasted  technically 
for  eight  years,  but  it  is  not  wholly  incorrect*  to 
estimate,  as  Parton  suggests,  that  it  endured  for  near- 
ly a  quarter  of  a  century.  Madison's  and  Monroe's 
administrations  were  but  the  continuation  of  it.  The 
fourth  and  fifth  Presidents  had,  indeed,  so  much  in 
common  that  it  was  about  an  even  chance  which 
should  take  the  Presidency  first.  Both  had  long 
been  friends  of  Jefferson;  both  had  something  to  do 
with  reconciling  him  to  the  Federal  States  Constitu- 
tion, which  he  had  at  first  opposed.  He  himself  would 
have  rather  preferred  Monroe  for  his  immediate  suc- 
cessor, but  the  legislature  of  Virginia  pronounced  in 
favor  of  Madison,  who,  like  the  two  others,  was  a 
native  of  that  then  powerful  State.  It  really  made 
little  difference  which  preceded.  Josiah  Quincy,  in 
a  famous  speech,  designated  them  simply  as  James 
the  First  and  James  the  Second.  The  two  were 
alike  Jeff ersonian ;  their  administrations  moved  pro- 
fessedly in  the  line  indicated  by  their  predecessor, 
and  the  success  of  his  policy  must  be  tested  in  a 
degree  by  that  of  theirs.  Both  inherited  something 
of  his  unpopularity  with  the  Federalists,  but  Madi- 
son partially  lived  it  down,  and  Monroe  saw  nearly 
the  extinction  of  it.     The  Jeffersonian  policy  may, 

343 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

therefore,  fairly  be  judged,  not  alone  by  its  early 
storms,  but  by  the  calm  which  at  last  followed. 

James  Madison  had  been  Secretary  of  State  for 
eight  years  under  Jefferson,  and  had  not  only  borne 
his  share  earlier  than  this  in  public  affairs,  but  had 
furnished  a  plan  which  formed  the  basis  of  the  Con- 
stitution, and  had  afterwards  aided  Hamilton  and 
Jay  in  writing  The  Federalist  in  support  of  it.  For 
these  reasons,  and  because  he  was  the  last  survivor 
of  those  who  signed  the  great  act  of  national  organ- 
ization, he  was  called,  before  his  death,  "The  Father 
of  the  Constitution."  He  was  a  man  of  clear  head, 
modest  manners,  and  peaceful  disposition.  His 
bitter  political  opponents  admitted  that  he  was 
honorable,  well  informed,  and  even,  in  his  own  way, 
patriotic ;  not  mean  or  malignant.  As  to  his  appear- 
ance, he  is  described  by  one  of  these  opponents, 
William  Sullivan,  as  one  who  had  "a  calm  expres- 
sion, a  penetrating  blue  eye,  and  who  looked  like  a 
thinking  man."  In  figure,  he  was  small  and  rather 
stout;  he  was  partially  bald,  wore  powder  in  his  hair, 
and  dressed  in  black,  without  any  of  Jefferson's  slov- 
enliness. In  speech  he  was  slow  and  grave.  Mrs. 
Madison  was  a  pleasing  woman,  twenty  years  younger 
than  himself,  and  they  had  no  children. 

Their  arrival  brought  an  immediate  change  in  the 
manners  of  the  President's  house;  they  were  both 
fond  of  society  and  ceremony,  and  though  the  new 
President  claimed  to  be  the  most  faithful  of  JefTer- 
sonians,  he  found  no  difficulty  in  restoring  the  formal 
receptions  which  his  predecessor  had  disused.  These 
levees  were  held  in  what  a  British  observer  of  that 
day  called  the  "  President's  palace,"  a  building  which 
the  same  observer   (Gleig)   afterwards  described  as 

344 


SECOND    WAR    FOR    INDEPENDENCE 

"small,  incommodious,  and  plain,"  although  its  walls 
were  the  same  with  those  of  the  present  White  House, 
only  the  interior  having  been  burned  by  the  British 
in  the  war  soon  to  be  described.  Such  as  it  was,  it 
was  thrown  open  at  these  levees,  which  every  one 
was  free  to  attend,  while  music  played,  and  the  cos- 
tumes of  foreign  ambassadors  gave,  as  now,  some 
gayety  to  the  scene.  Mrs.  Madison,  according  to  a 
keen  observer,  Mrs.  Quincy,  wore  on  these  occasions 
her  carriage  dress,  the  same  in  which  she  appeared 
on  Sunday  at  the  Capitol,  where  religious  services 
were  then  held — "a  purple  velvet  pelisse,  and  a  hat 
trimmed  with  ermine.  A  very  elegant  costume," 
adds  this  feminine  critic,  "but  not,  I  thought,  ap- 
propriate to  a  lady  receiving  company  at  home." 
At  another  time  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Quincy  dined  at  the 
President's  house,  "in  the  midst  of  the  enemy's 
camp,"  they  being  the  only  Federalists  among  some 
five-and-twenty  Democrats.  The  house,  Mrs.  Quincy 
tells  us,  was  richly  but  incongruously  furnished,  "not 
of  a  piece,  as  we  ladies  say."  On  this  occasion  Mrs. 
Madison  wore  black  velvet,  with  a  very  rich  head- 
dress of  coquelicot  and  gold,  having  on  a  necklace  of 
the  same  color.  At  another  time  Mrs.  Quincy  went 
by  invitation  with  her  children,  and  was  shown 
through  the  front  rooms.  Meeting  the  lady  of  the 
house,  she  apologized  for  the  liberty,  and  Mrs.  Madi- 
son said,  gracefully,  "It  is  as  much  your  house  as  it 
is  mine,  ladies."  The  answer  has  a  certain  historic 
value ;  it  shows  that  the  spirit  of  Jefferson  had  already 
wrought  a  change  in  the  direction  of  democratic  feel- 
ing. Such  a  remark  would  hardly  have  been  made 
by  Mrs.  Washington,  or  even  by  Mrs.  Adams. 

The  tone  of  society  in  Washington  had  undoubted- 
a3  345 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

ly  something  of  the  coarser  style  which  then  prevailed 
in  all  countries.  Men  drank  more  heavily,  wrangled 
more  loudly,  and  there  was  a  good  deal  of  what  after- 
wards came  to  be  known  as  "plantation  manners." 
The  mutual  bearing  of  Congressmen  was  that  of  cour- 
tesy, tempered  by  drunkenness  and  duelling;  and  it 
was  true  then,  as  always,  that  every  duel  caused  ten 
new  quarrels  for  each  one  that  it  decided.  When 
Josiah  Quincy,  then  the  leader  of  the  Federalists  in 
Congress,  made  his  famous  speech  against  the  in- 
vasion of  Canada  (January  5,  181 3),  and  Henry  Clay, 
then  Speaker  of  the  House,  descended  from  the  chair 
expressly  to  force  him  to  the  alternative  of  "a  duel 
or  disgrace" — as  avowed  by  one  of  his  friends  to 
Quincy — it  was  not  held  to  be  anything  but  honor- 
able action,  and  only  the  high  moral  courage  of 
Quincy  enabled  him  to  avoid  the  alternative.  On  a 
later  occasion,  Grundy,  of  Tennessee,  having  to  answer 
another  speech  by  Quincy,  took  pains  to  explain  to 
him  privately  that  though  he  must  abuse  him  as  a 
representative  Federalist  or  else  lose  his  election,  he 
would  endeavor  to  bestow  the  abuse  like  a  gentle- 
man. "  Except  Tim  Pickering,"  said  this  frank  Ten- 
nesseean,  "  there  is  not  a  man  in  the  United  States  so 
perfectly  hated  by  the  people  of  my  district  as  your- 
self.    By I  must  abuse  you,  or  I  shall  never  get 

re-elected.     I  will  do  it,  however,  genteelly.     I  will 

not  do  it  as  that fool  Clay  did  it,  strike  so  hard  as 

to  hurt  myself.  But  abuse  you  I  must."  Seeing  by 
this  explanation  what  was  the  tone  of  Congressional 
manners  when  putting  on  gentility,  we  can  form  some 
conception  of  what  they  were  on  those  more  frequent 
occasions  when  they  were  altogether  ungenteel. 
But  the  amenities  of  Mrs.  Madison  and  the  gentili- 

346 


SECOND    WAR    FOR    INDEPENDENCE 

ties  of  Mr.  Grundy  were  alike  interrupted  by  the  ex- 
citements of  war — "the  war  of  1812,"  habitually 
called  "the  late  war"  until  there  was  one  still  later. 
For  this  contest,  suddenly  as  it  came  at  last,  there 
were  years  of  preparation.  Long  had  the  United 
States  suffered  the  bitter  experience  of  being  placed 
between  two  contending  nations,  neither  of  which 
could  be  made  into  a  friend  or  easily  reached  as  an 
enemy.  Napoleon  with  his  "Decrees,"  the  British 
government  with  its  "Orders  in  Council,"  had  in 
turn  preyed  upon  American  commerce,  and  it  was 
scarce  reviving  from  the  paralysis  of  Jefferson's  em- 
bargo. At  home,  men  were  divided  as  to  the  remedy, 
and  the  old  sympathies  for  France  and  for  England 
reappeared  on  each  side.  Unfortunately  for  the 
Federalists,  while  they  were  wholly  right  in  many  of 
their  criticisms  on  the  manner  in  which  the  war  came 
about,  they  put  themselves  in  the  wrong  as  to  its  main 
feature.  We  can  now  see  that  in  their  just  wrath 
against  Napoleon  they  would  have  let  the  nation  re- 
main in  a  position  of  perpetual  childhood  and  subor- 
dination before  England.  No  doubt  there  were  vari- 
ous points  at  issue  in  the  impending  contest,  but  the 
most  important  one,  and  the  only  one  that  remained  in 
dispute  all  through  the  war,  was  that  of  the  right  of 
search  and  impressment  —  the  English  claiming  the 
right  to  visit  American  vessels  and  impress  into  the 
naval  service  any  sailors  who  appeared  to  be  British 
subjects.  The  one  great  object  of  the  war  of  181 2 
was  to  get  rid  of  this  insolent  and  degrading  practice. 
It  must  be  understood  that  this  was  not  a  question 
of  reclaiming  deserters  from  the  British  navy,  for 
the  seamen  in  question  had  very  rarely  belonged  to 
it.     There  existed  in  England  at  that  time  an  out- 

347 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

rage  on  civilization,  now  abandoned,  called  impress- 
ment, by  which  any  sailor,  and  many  who  were  not 
sailors,  could  be  seized  and  compelled  to  serve  in  the 
navy.  The  horrors  of  the  ''press-gang,"  as  exhibit- 
ed in  the  sea-side  towns  of  England,  have  formed  the 
theme  of  many  novels.  It  was  bad  enough  at  home, 
but  when  applied  on  board  the  vessels  of  a  nation  with 
which  England  was  at  peace,  it  became  one  of  those 
outrages  which  only  proceed  from  the  strong  to  the 
weak,  and  are  never  reciprocated.  Lord  Colling- 
wood  said  well,  in  one  of  his  letters,  that  England 
would  not  submit  to  such  an  aggression  for  an  hour. 
Merely  to  yield  to  visitation  for  such  a  purpose  was 
a  confession  of  national  weakness ;  but  the  actual  case 
was  far  worse  than  this.  Owing  to  the  similarity  of 
language,  it  was  always  difficult  to  distinguish  be- 
tween English  and  American  seamen;  and  the  temp- 
tation was  irresistible  to  the  visiting  officer,  anxious 
for  the  enlargement  of  his  own  crew,  to  give  England 
the  benefit  of  the  doubt.  The  result  was  that  an 
English  lieutenant,  or  even  midshipman,  once  on 
board  an  American  ship,  was,  in  the  words  of  the 
English  writer  Cobbett,  "at  once  accuser,  witness, 
judge,  and  captor,"  and  we  have  also  Cobbett's  state- 
ment of  the  consequences.  "  Great  numbers  of 
Americans  have  been  impressed,"  he  adds,  "and  are 
now  in  our  navy.  .  .  .  That  many  of  these  men  have 
died  on  board  our  ships,  that  many  have  been  worn 
out  in  the  service,  there  is  no  doubt.  Some  obtain 
their  release  through  the  application  of  the  American 
Consul,  and  the  sufferings  of  these  have  been  in  many 
instances  very  great.  There  have  been  instances 
where  men  have  thus  got  free  after  having  been 
flogged  through  the  fleet  for  desertion."     Between 

348 


SECOND    WAR    FOR    INDEPENDENCE 

1797  and  1 80 1  more  than  two  thousand  applications 
for  impressed  seamen  were  made  through  the  Ameri- 
can Minister;  and  of  these  only  one-twentieth  were 
proved  to  be  British  subjects,  though,  nearly  one-half 
were  retained  for  further  proof.  When  the  Hornet 
captured  the  British  sloop  Peacock,  the  victors  found 
on  board  three  American  seamen  who  had  been  forced, 
by  holding  pistols  at  their  heads,  to  fight  against 
their  own  countrymen.  Four  American  seamen  on 
the  British  ship  Act-xa  were  ordered  five  dozen  lashes, 
then  four  dozen,  then  two  dozen,  then  kept  in  irons 
three  months,  for  refusing  to  obey  orders  under  sim- 
ilar circumstances.  There  was  nothing  new  about 
the  grievance;  it  had  been  the  subject  of  indignant 
negotiation  since  1789.  In  1796  Timothy  Pickering, 
Secretary  of  State,  a  representative  Federalist,  had 
denounced  the  practice  of  search  and  impressment  as 
the  sacrifice  of  the  rights  of  an  independent  nation, 
and  lamented  "the  long  and  fruitless  attempts"  to 
correct  it.  In  1806  the  merchants  of  Boston  had 
called  upon  the  general  government  to  "assert  our 
rights  and  support  the  dignity  of  the  United  States" ; 
and  the  merchants  of  Salem  had  offered  to  "pledge 
their  lives  and  properties"  in  support  of  necessary 
measures  of  redemption.  Yet  it  shows  the  height  of 
party  feeling  that  when,  in  181 2,  Mr.  Madison's  gov- 
ernment finally  went  to  war  for  these  very  rights,  the 
measure  met  with  the  bitterest  opposition  from  the 
whole  Federalist  party,  and  from  the  commercial 
States  generally. 

A  good  type  of  the  Federalist  opposition  on  this 
particular  point  is  to  be  found  in  the  pamphlets  of 
John  Lowell.  This  writer  was  the  son  of  the  eminent 
Massachusetts  judge  of  that  name;  he  was  a  well-edu- 

349 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

cated  lawyer,  was  president  of  the  Massachusetts  Agri- 
cultural Society,  and  wrote  under  the  name  of  "A 
New  England  Farmer."  In  spite  of  the  protests 
offered  half  j^feen  years  before  by  his  own  neigh- 
bors, he  declared  the  whole  outcry  against  impress- 
ment to  be  a  device  of  Madison's  party.  The  nation, 
he  said,  was  "totally  opposed  to  a  war  for  the  pur- 
pose of  protecting  British  seamen  against  their  own 
sovereign."  The  whole  matter  at  issue,  he  asserted, 
was  "  the  protection  of  renegadoes  and  deserters  from 
the  British  navy."  He  argued  unflinchingly  for  the 
English  right  of  search,  called  it  a  "consecrated" 
right,  maintained  that  the  allegiance  of  British  sub- 
jects was  perpetual,  and  that  no  residence  in  a  for- 
eign country  could  absolve  them.  He  held  that  every 
sailor  born  in  Great  Britain,  whether  naturalized  in 
America  or  not,  should  be  absolutely  excluded  from 
American  ships;  and  that,  until  this  was  done,  the 
right  to  search  American  vessels  and  take  such  sail- 
ors out  was  the  only  restraint  on  the  abuse.  He 
was  a  man  of  great  ability  and  public  spirit,  and  yet 
he  held  views  which  now  seem  to  have  renounced  all 
national  self-respect.  While  such  a  man,  with  a  large 
party  behind  him,  took  this  position,  it  must  simply 
be  said  that  the  American  republic  had  not  yet  as- 
serted itself  to  be  a  nation.  Soon  after  the  Revolu- 
tion, when  some  one  spoke  of  that  contest  to  Franklin 
as  the  war  for  independence,  he  said,  "  Say  rather  the 
war  of  the  Revolution;  the  war  for  independence  is 
yet  to  be  fought."  The  war  of  1812  was  just  the 
contest  he  described. 

To  this  excitement  directed  against  the  war,  the 
pulpit  very  largely  contributed,  the  chief  lever  ap- 
plied by  the  Federalist  clergy  being  found  in  the 

35o 


SECOND    WAR    FOR    INDEPENDENCE 

atrocities  of  Napoleon.  "The  chieftain  of  Europe, 
drunk  with  blood,  casts  a  look  upon  us ;  he  raises  his 
voice,  more  terrible  than  the  midnight  yell  of  sav- 
ages at  the  doors  of  our  forefathe^L  These  melo- 
dramatic words  are  from  a  sermon/wnce  famous, 
delivered  by  Rev.  Daniel  Parish,  of  Byfield,  Massa- 
chusetts, on  Fast  Day,  1810.  Elsewhere  he  says: 
"  Would  you  establish  those  in  the  first  offices  of  the 
land  who  will  poison  the  hearts  of  your  children  with 
infidelity,  who  will  harness  them  in  the  team  of  Hol- 
landers and  Germans  and  Swiss  and  Italians  to  draw 
the  triumphal  car  of  Napoleon  ?  Are  you  nursing  your 
sons  to  be  dragged  into  his  armies?"  The  climax 
was  reached  when  one  pulpit  orator  wound  up  his 
appeal  by  asking  his  audience  if  they  were  ready  to 
wear  wooden  shoes,  in  allusion  to  the  sabots  of  the 
French  peasants. 

A  curious  aspect  of  the  whole  affair  was  the  firm 
conviction  of  the  Federalists  that  they  themselves 
were  utterly  free  from  all  partisan  feeling,  and  that 
what  they  called  the  "  Baleful  Demon,  Party,"  exist- 
ed only  on  the  other  side.  For  the  Democrats  to 
form  Jacobin  societies  was  an  outrage ;  but  the  "  Wash- 
ington Benevolent  Societies"  of  the  Federalists  were 
claimed  to  be  utterly  non  -  political,  though  they 
marched  with  banners,  held  quarterly  meetings,  and 
were  all  expected  to  vote  one  way.  At  one  of  their 
gatherings  there  was  a  company  of  "  School  -boy 
Federalists"  to  the  number  of  two  hundred  and 
fifty,  uniformed  in  blue  and  white,  and  wearing 
Washington's  Farewell  Address  in  red  morocco 
around  their  necks.  It  was  a  sight  hardly  to  be 
paralleled  in  the  most  excited  election  of  these  days; 
yet  the  Federalists  stoutly  maintained  that  there 

35i 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

was  nothing  partisan  about  it;  the  other  side  was 
partisan.  They  admired  themselves  for  their  width 
of  view  and  their  freedom  from  prejudice,  and  yet 
they  sincerely,  believed  that  the  mild  and  cautious 
Madison,  who  would  not  have  declared  war  with 
England  unless  forced  into  it  by  others,  was  plotting 
to  enslave  his  own  nation  for  the  benefit  of  France. 
The  very  names  of  their  pamphlets  show  this.  One 
of  John  Lowell's  bears  on  the  title-page  "Perpetual 
War  the  policy  of  Mr.  Madison  .  .  .  the  important  and 
interesting  subject  of  a  conscript  militia,  and  an  im- 
mense standing  army  of  guards  and  spies  under  the 
name  of  a  local  volunteer  corps"  The  Federalist  lead- 
ers took  distinctly  the  ground  that  they  should  refuse 
to  obey  a  conscription  law  to  raise  troops  for  the 
conquest  of  Canada;  and  when  that  very  question- 
able measure  failed  by  one  vote  in  the  Senate,  the 
nation  may  have  escaped  a  serious  outbreak.  Had 
the  law  passed  and  been  enforced,  William  Sullivan 
ominously  declares,  "  No  doubt  the  citizens  would 
have  armed,  and  might  have  marched,  but  not,  it  is 
believed,  to  Canada."  This  was  possibly  overstated; 
but  the  crisis  thus  arising  might  have  been  a  formid- 
able matter. 

It  might,  indeed,  have  been  far  more  dangerous 
than  the  Hartford  Convention  of  1814,  which  was, 
after  all,  only  a  peaceable  meeting  of  some  two  dozen 
honest  men,  with  George  Cabot  at  their  head — men 
of  whom  very  few  had  even  a  covert  purpose  of  dis- 
solving the  Union,  but  who  were  driven  to  something 
very  near  desperation  by  the  prostration  of  their 
commerce  and  the  defencelessness  of  their  coast. 
They  found  themselves  between  the  terror  of  a  con- 
scription in  New  England  and  the  outrage  of  an  in- 

352 


SECOND    WAR    FOR    INDEPENDENCE 

vasion  of  Canada.  They  found  the  President  call- 
ing in  his  message  of  November  4,  181 2,  for  new 
and  mysterious  enactments  against  "  corrupt  and  per- 
fidious intercourse  with  the  enemy,  not  amounting 
to  treason,"  and  they  did  not  feel  quite  sure  that 
this  might  not  end  in  the  guillotine  or  the  lamp-post. 
They  saw  what  were  called  "the  horrors  of  Balti- 
more" in  a  mob  where  the  blood  of  Revolutionary 
officers  had  been  shed  in  that  city  under  pretence  of 
suppressing  a  newspaper.  No  one  could  tell  whither 
these  things  were  leading,  and  they  could  at  least 
protest.  The  protest  will  always  be  remarkable  from 
the  skill  with  which  it  turned  against  Jefferson  and 
Madison  the  dangerous  State-rights  doctrines  of  their 
own  injurious  Virginia  and  Kentucky  resolutions. 
The  Federalist  and  Democratic  parties  had  complete- 
ly shifted  ground ;  and  we  can  now  see  that  the  Hart- 
ford Convention  really  strengthened  the  traditions 
of  the  Union  by  showing  that  the  implied  threat  of 
secession  was  a  game  at  which  two  could  play. 

It  must  be  remembered,  too,  in  estimating  the 
provocation  which  led  to  this  famous  convention, 
that  during  all  this  time  the  commercial  States  were 
most  unreasonably  treated.  In  the  opinion  of  Judge 
Story,  himself  a  moderate  Republican  and  a  member 
of  Congress,  "New  England  was  expected,  so  far  as 
the  Republicans  were  concerned,  to  do  everything 
and  have  nothing.  They  were  to  obey,  but  not  to 
be  trusted."  Their  commerce,  which  had  furnished 
so  largely  the  supplies  for  the  nation,  was  viewed  by 
a  great  many  not  merely  with  indifference,  but  with 
real  dislike.  Jefferson,  whose  views  had  more  in- 
fluence than  those  of  any  ten  other  men,  still  held  to 
his  narrow  Virginia-planter  opinion  that  a  national 

353 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

business  must  somehow  be  an  evil;  and  it  was  hard 
for  those  whose  commerce  his  embargo  had  ruined  to 
be  patient  while  he  rubbed  his  hands  and  assured 
them  that  they  would  be  much  better  off  without 
any  ships.  When  the  war  of  1812  was  declared,  the 
merchants  of  Boston  and  Salem  had — as  it  was  es- 
timated by  Isaac  P.  Davis,  quoted  in  the  memoirs 
of  Mrs.  Quincy — twenty  million  dollars'  worth  of 
property  on  the  sea  and  in  British  ports.  The  war 
sacrificed  nearly  all  of  it,  and  the  losers  were  expected 
to  be  grateful.  In  a  letter  to  the  legislature  of 
New  Hampshire,  four  years  before  (August,  1808), 
Jefferson  had  calmly  recommended  to  the  people  of 
that  region  to  retire  from  the  seas  and  "to  provide 
for  themselves  [ourselves]  those  comforts  and  con- 
veniences of  life  for  which  it  would  be  unwise  ever  to 
recur  to  other  countries."  Moreover,  it  was  argued, 
the  commercial  States  were  almost  exclusively  the 
sufferers  by  the  British  intrusions  upon  American 
vessels;  and  if  they  did  not  think  it  a  case  for  war, 
why  should  it  be  taken  up  by  the  States  which  were 
not  hurt  by  it?  Again,  the  commercial  States  had 
yielded  to  the  general  government  the  right  of  re- 
ceiving customs  duties  and  of  national  defence,  on 
the  express  ground  of  receiving  protection  in  return. 
Madison  had  pledged  himself — as  he  was  reminded 
in  the  once  famous  "  Rockingham  County  [New 
Hampshire]  address,"  penned  by  young  Daniel  Web- 
ster— to  give  the  nation  a  navy;  and  it  had  resulted 
in  Jefferson's  hundred  and  fifty  little  gun-boats  and 
some  twenty  larger  vessels.  As  for  the  army,  it  con- 
sisted at  this  time  of  about  three  thousand  men  all 
told.  The  ablest  men  in  the  President's  cabinet — 
Gallatin  and  Pinkney — were  originally  opposed  to 

354 


SECOND    WAR    FOR    INDEPENDENCE 

the  war.  The  only  member  of  that  body  who  had 
any  personal  knowledge  of  military  matters  was  Col- 
onel James  Monroe,  Secretary  of  State;  and  it  was 
subsequently  thought  that  he  knew  just  enough  to 
be  in  the  way.  Nevertheless,  the  war  was  declared, 
June  1 8,  1 812  —  declared  reluctantly,  hesitatingly, 
but  at  last  courageously.  Five  days  after  the  dec- 
laration the  British  ''Orders  in  Council,"  which  had 
partly  caused  it,  were  revoked;  but  hostilities  went 
on.  In  the  same  autumn  Madison  was  re-elected 
President,  receiving  128  electoral  votes  against  89 
for  De  Witt  Clinton ;  Elbridge  Gerry,  of  Massachusetts, 
being  chosen  Vice-president.  A  sufficient  popular 
verdict  was  thus  given,  and  the  war  was  continued. 
In  its  early  period  much  went  wrong.  British  and 
Indians  ravaged  the  northwestern  frontier;  General 
Hull  invaded  Canada  in  vain,  and  finally  surrendered 
Detroit  (August  15,  181 2).  He  was  condemned  by 
court-martial  and  sentenced  to  be  shot,  but  was  par- 
doned because  of  his  Revolutionary  services;  and 
much  has  since  been  written  in  his  vindication,  mak- 
ing it  altogether  probable  that  he  was  simply  made 
the  scapegoat  of  an  inefficient  administration.  To 
the  surprise  of  every  one,  it  was  upon  the  sea,  not  the 
land,  that  the  United  States  proved  eminently  suc- 
cessful, and  the  victory  of  the  Constitution  over  the 
Guerriere  was  the  first  of  a  long  line  of  triumphs. 
The  number  of  British  war-vessels  captured  during 
the  three  years  of  the  war  was  56,  with  880  cannon; 
the  number  of  American  war-vessels  only  25,  with 
350  guns;  and  there  were,  besides  these,  thousands 
of  merchant-vessels  taken  on  both  sides  by  privateers. 
But  these  mere  statistics  tell  nothing  of  the  excite- 
ment of  those   picturesque  victories  which  so  long 

355 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

thrilled  the  heart  of  every  American  school-boy  with 
the  conviction  that  this  nation  was  the  peer  of  the 
proudest  upon  the  seas.  Yet  the  worst  predictions 
of  the  Federalists  did  not  exaggerate  the  injury  done 
by  the  war  to  American  commerce;  and  the  highest 
expectations  of  the  other  party  did  no  more  than 
justice  to  the  national  prestige  gained  by  the  suc- 
cesses of  the  American  navy.  It  is  fairly  to  be  re- 
membered to  the  credit  of  the  Federalists,  however, 
that  but  for  their  urgent  appeals  there  would  have 
been  no  navy,  and  that  it  was  created  only  by  set- 
ting aside  Jefferson's  pet  theories  of  sea  defence. 
The  Federalists  could  justly  urge,  also,  that  the  mer- 
chant-service was  the  only  nursery  of  seamen,  and 
that  with  its  destruction  the  race  of  American  sailors 
would  die  out — a  prediction  which  the  present  day 
has  seen  almost  fulfilled. 

But,  for  the  time  being,  the  glory  of  the  American 
navy  was  secure;  and  even  the  sea-fights  hardly 
equalled  the  fame  of  Perry's  victory  on  Lake  Erie, 
immortalized  by  two  phrases,  Lawrence's  "Don't 
give  up  the  ship,"  which  Perry  bore  upon  his  flag, 
and  Perry's  own  brief  despatch,  "We  have  met  the 
enemy,  and  they  are  ours."  Side  by  side  with  this 
came  Harrison's  land  victories  over  the  Indians  and 
English  in  the  northwest.  Tecumseh,  who  held  the 
rank  of  brigadier-general  in  the  British  army,  had, 
with  the  aid  of  his  brother,  "the  Prophet,"  united 
all  the  Indian  tribes  in  a  league.  His  power  was 
broken  by  Harrison  in  the  battle  of  Tippecanoe  (No- 
vember 7,  1811),  and  finally  destroyed  in  that  of  the 
Thames,  in  Canada  (October  5,  1813),  where  Tecum- 
seh fell. 

But  the  war,  from  the  first,  yielded  few  glories  to 

356 


SECOND    WAR    FOR    INDEPENDENCE 

either  side  by  land.     The   Americans  were   still   a 
nation  of  woodsmen  and  sharp-shooters,  but  they  had 
lost  the  military  habit,  and  they  had  against  them 
the  veterans  of  Wellington,  and  men  who  boasted — 
to  Mrs.   Peter,   of  Washington— that  they  had  not 
slept  under  a  roof  for  seven  years.     Even  with  such 
men  the  raid  on  the  city  of  Washington  by  General 
Ross  was  a  bold  thing— to  march  with  four  thousand 
men  sixty  miles  into  an  enemy's  country,  burn  its 
Capitol,  and  retreat.     Had  the  Americans  renewed 
the  tactics  of  Concord  and  Lexington,  and  fought 
from  behind  trees  and  under  cover  of  brick  walls, 
the    British   commander's   losses   might    have   been 
frightful;  but  to  risk  a  pitched  battle  was  to  leave 
themselves  helpless  if  defeated.     The  utter  rout  of 
the  Americans  at  Bladensburg  left  Washington  to 
fall  defenceless  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy.     The 
accounts  are  still  somewhat  confused,  but  the  British 
statement  is  that,  before  entering  the  city,  General 
Ross  sent  in  a  flag  of  truce,  meaning  to  levy  a  con- 
tribution, as  from  a  conquered  town ;  and  the  flag  of 
truce  being  fired  upon,  the  destruction  of  the  town 
followed.    Washington  had  then  less  than  a  thousand 
houses;  the  British  troops  set  fire  to  the  unfinished 
Capitol  with  the  Library  of  Congress,  to  the  Treasury 
Buildings,  the  Arsenal,  and  a  few  private  dwellings. 
At   the    President's   house— according   to   their  own 
story,  since  doubted— they  found  dinner  ready,  de- 
voured it,  and  then  set  the  house  on  fire.     Mr.  Madi- 
son sent  a  messenger  to  his  wife  to  bid  her  flee.     She 
wrote  to  her  sister,  ere  going,  "Our  kind  friend  Mr. 
Carroll  has  come  to  hasten  my  departure,  and  is  in 
a  very  bad  humor  with  me  because  I  insist  on  wait- 
ing till  the  large  picture  of  General  Washington  is 

357 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

secured,  and  it  requires  to  be  unscrewed  from  the 
wall."  She  finally  secured  it,  put  it  into  the  hands 
of  two  gentlemen  passing  by,  Jacob  Barker  and  Mr. 
De  Peyster,  and  went  off  in  her  carriage  with  her  sis- 
ter, Mrs.  Cutts.  The  Federalist  papers  made  plenty 
of  fun  of  her  retreat,  and  the  historian  Lossing  has 
preserved  a  fragment  of  one  of  their  ballads  in  which 
she  is  made  to  say  to  the  President,  in  the  style  of 
John  Gilpin: 

"Sister  Cutts  and  Cutts  and  I, 
And  Cutts's  children  three, 
Shall  in  the  coach,  and  you  shall  ride 
On  horseback  after  we." 

But,  on  the  whole,  the  lady  of  the  Presidential  "  pal- 
ace" carried  off  more  laurels  from  Washington  than 
most  American  men. 

The  news  of  the  burning  of  Washington  was  va- 
riously received  in  England:  the  British  Annual  Reg- 
ister called  it  "a  return  to  the  times  of  barbarism," 
and  the  London  Times  saw  in  it,  on  the  contrary,  the 
disappearance  of  the  American  republic,  which  it 
called  by  the  withering  name  of  an  "association": 
"That  ill-organized  association  is  on  the  eve  of  dis- 
solution, and  the  world  is  speedily  to  be  delivered  of 
the  mischievous  example  of  the  existence  of  a  gov- 
ernment founded  on  democratic  rebellion."  But  the 
burning  had,  on  the  contrary,  just  the  opposite  effect 
from  this.  After  Washington  had  fallen,  Baltimore 
seemed  an  easy  prey;' but  there  was  a  great  rising  of 
the  people;  the  British  army  was  beaten  off — the 
affair  turning  largely  on  the  gallant  defence  of  Fort 
McHenry  by  Colonel  George  Armistead — and  Gen- 
eral Ross  was  killed.     It  was  at  this  time  that  Key's 

358 


SECOND    WAR    FOR    INDEPENDENCE 

lyric  "The  Star-spangled  Banner"  was  written,  the 
author  being  detained  on  board  the  cartel-ship  Min- 
den  during  the  bombardment.  Before  this  there  had 
been  various  depredations  and  skirmishes  along  the 
coast  of  Maine  and  a  courageous  repulse  of  the  Brit- 
ish at  Stonington,  Connecticut.  Afterwards  came 
the  well-fought  battle  of  Lundy's  Lane  and  the  clos- 
ing victory  of  New  Orleans,  fought  after  the  treaty 
of  peace  had  been  actually  signed,  and  unexpectedly 
leaving  the  final  laurels  of  the  war  in  the  hands  of  the 
Americans. 

After  this  battle  an  English  officer  visiting  the  field 
saw  within  a  few  hundred  yards  ' '  nearly  a  thousand 
bodies,  all  arrayed  in  British  uniforms,"  and  heard 
from  the  American  officer  in  command  the  statement 
that  the  American  loss  had  consisted  only  of  eight 
men  killed  and  fourteen  wounded.  The  loss  of  the 
English  was  nearly  twenty-one  hundred  in  killed  and 
wounded,  including  two  general  officers.  A  triumph 
so  overwhelming  restored  some  feeling  of  military 
self-respect,  sorely  needed  after  the  disaster  at  Wash- 
ington. "There  were,"  says  the  Federalist  William 
Sullivan,  "splendid  processions,  bonfires,  and  illumi- 
nations, as  though  the  independence  of  the  country 
had  been  a  second  time  achieved."  Such,  indeed, 
was  the  feeling,  and  with  some  reason.  Franklin's 
war  for  independence  was  at  an  end.  The  battle 
took  place  January  8,  1815,  but  the  treaty  of  peace 
had  been  signed  at  Ghent  on  the  day  before  Christ- 
mas. The  terms  agreed  upon  said  not  one  word 
about  impressment  or  the  right  of  search,  but  the 
question  had  been  practically  settled  by  the  naval 
successes  of  the  United  States;  and  so  great  were 
the    rejoicings   on  the    return    of  peace    that   even 

359 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

this  singular  omission  seemed  of  secondary  impor- 
tance. 

The  verdict  of  posterity  upon  the  war  of  1812  may 
be  said  to  be  this :  that  there  was  ample  ground  for  it, 
and  that  it  completed  the  work  of  the  Revolution; 
and  yet  that  it  was  the  immediate  product  of  a  few 
ambitious  men,  whose  aims  and  principles  were  not 
really  so  high  as  were  those  of  many  who  opposed  the 
war.  The  outrageous  impressment  of  American  sea- 
men touched  a  point  of  national  pride,  and  justly; 
while  the  United  States  submitted  to  this  it  certainly 
could  not  be  called  an  independent  nation;  and  the 
abuse  was  in  fact  ended  by  the  war,  even  though  the 
treaty  of  peace  was  silent.  On  the  other  side,  the 
dread  entertained  of  Napoleon  by  the  Federalists 
was  perfectly  legitimate;  and  this,  too,  time  has  jus- 
tified. But  this  peril  was  really  far  less  pressing  than 
the  other:  the  United  States  needed  more  to  be  lib- 
erated from  the  domineering  attitude  of  England 
than  from  the  remoter  tyranny  of  Napoleon,  and  it 
was  therefore  necessary  to  reckon  with  England  first. 
In  point  of  fact,  the  Federalists  did  their  duty  in 
action;  the  commonwealth  of  Massachusetts  fur- 
nished during  those  three  years  more  soldiers  than 
any  other;  and  the  New  England  States,  which  op- 
posed the  war,  sent  more  men  into  the  field  than  the 
Southern  States,  which  brought  on  the  contest.  Un- 
fortunately the  world  remembers  words  better  than 
actions — littera  scripta  manet — and  the  few  question- 
able phrases  of  the  Hartford  Convention  are  now 
more  familiar  in  memory  than  the  fourteen  thousand 
men  whom  Massachusetts  raised  in  18 14  or  the  two 
millions  of  dollars  she  paid  for  bounties. 

The  rest  of  Madison's  administration  was  a  career 

360 


IN    THE    AMERICAN    TRENCHES,    BATTLE    OF    NEW    ORLEANS 


SECOND    WAR  .FOR    INDEPENDENCE 

of  peace.  Louisiana  had  long  since  (April  30,  181 2) 
become  a  State  of  the  Union,  and  Indiana  was  also 
admitted  (December  11,  181 6).  An  act  was  passed 
under  the  leadership  of  Lowndes,  of  South  Carolina, 
providing  for  the  payment,  in  instalments  of  ten 
millions  of  dollars  annually,  of  the  national  debt  of 
one  hundred  and  twenty  millions.  Taxes  were  re- 
duced, the  tariff  was  slightly  increased,  and  in  April, 
1 8 16,  a  second  national  bank  was  chartered  for  a  term 
of  twenty  years.  Here,  as  in  some  other  matters,  at 
least  one  of  the  parties  proved  to  have  changed  ground, 
and  the  Democratic  Republican  newspapers  began 
eagerly  to  reprint  Hamilton's  arguments  for  a  bank 
— arguments  which  they  had  formerly  denounced 
and  derided.  To  the  Federalists  the  passage  of  the 
bank  act  was  a  complete  triumph,  and,  while  their 
own  party  disappeared,  they  could  feel  that  some  of 
its  principles  survived.  A  national  bank  was  their 
policy,  not  that  of  Jefferson ;  and  Jefferson  and  Madi- 
son had,  moreover,  lived  to  take  up  those  theories 
of  a  strong  national  government  which  they  had 
formerly  called  monarchical  and  despotic.  The  Fed- 
eralists had,  indeed,  come  equally  near  to  embracing 
the  extreme  State -rights  doctrines  which  their  op- 
ponents had  laid  down ;  but  the  laws  of  physical  per- 
spective seem  to  be  reversed  in  moral  perspective, 
so  that  our  own  change  of  position  seems  to  us  insig- 
nificant, while  an  equal  change  on  the  other  side  looks 
conspicuous  and  important.  Be  this  as  it  may,  Madi- 
son's administration  closed  in  peace,  partly  the  peace 
of  good-nature,  partly  of  fatigue.  The  usual  nomi- 
nations were  made  for  the  Presidency  by  the  Con- 
gressional caucuses,  but  when  it  came  to  the  voting 
it  was  almost  all  one  way.  The  only  States  choos- 
a4  361 


HISTORY    OP    THE    UNITED    STATES 

ing  Federalist  electors  were  Massachusetts,  Connect- 
icut, and  Delaware.  James  Monroe — Josiah  Quincy's 
" James  the  Second"— had  183  electoral"  votes, 
against  34  for  Rufus  King,  so  that  four  years  more 
of  yet  milder  Jeflersonianism  were  secured.  The 
era  of  bitterness  had  passed  and  the  "era  of  good 
feeling"  was  at  hand. 


XVI 

THE  ERA  OF  GOOD  FEELING 

MANY  Presidents  of  the  United  States  have  served 
their  country  by  remaining  at  Washington,  but 
probably  James  Monroe  was  the  only  one  who  ever 
accomplished  great  good  by  going  on  an  excursion. 
Few  battles  in  the  Revolution  were  of  so  much  bene- 
fit to  the  nation  as  the  journey  which,  in  1817,  the 
President  decided  to  undertake.  There  were  two 
especial  reasons  for  this  beneficent  result:  the  tour 
reconciled  the  people  to  the  administration,  and  it 
reconciled  the  administration  to  what  seemed  the 
really  alarming  growth  of  the  people. 

The  fact  that  Monroe  was  not  generally  held  to  be 
a  very  great  man  enhanced  the  value  of  this  expe- 
dition. He  had  been  an  unfortunate  diplomatist, 
retrieving  his  failures  by  good-luck;  as  a  soldier,  he 
had  blundered  at  Washington,  and  yet  had  retained 
enough  of  confidence  to  be  talked  of  as  probable  com- 
mander of  a  Canadian  invasion.  All  this  was  rather 
advantageous.  It  is  sometimes  a  good  thing  when  a 
ruler  is  not  personally  eminent  enough  to  obscure  his 
office.  In  such  a  case,  what  the  man  loses  the  office 
may  gain.  Wherever  Washington  went  he  was  re- 
ceived as  a  father  among  grateful  children;  Adams 
had  his  admire? s,  Jefferson  his  adorers ;  Madison  had 
carried  through  a  war  which,  if  not  successful,  was 

363 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

at  least  a  drawn  game.  All  these,  had  they  under- 
taken what  play-actors  call  "starring  in  the  prov- 
inces," would  have  been  received  as  stars,  not  as 
officials.  Whatever  applauses  they  received  would 
have  been  given  to  the  individual,  not  the  President. 
But  when  Monroe  travelled,  it  was  simply  the  Chief 
Magistrate  of  the  nation  who  met  the  eyes  of  men. 
He  was  not  a  star,  but  a  member  of  the  company,  a 
stock  actor,  one  of  themselves.  In  the  speeches  with 
which  he  was  everywhere  received  there  was  very 
little  said  about  his  personality;  it  was  the  head  of 
the  nation  who  was  welcomed.  Thus  stripped  of  all 
individual  prestige,  the  occasion  appealed  to  every 
citizen.  For  the  first  time  the  people  of  the  United 
States  met  their  President  as  such,  and  felt  that  they 
were  a  nation. 

It  was  at  the  end  of  sixteen  years  of  strife — politi- 
cal strife  more  bitter  than  can  easily  be  paralleled  in 
these  calmer  days.  The  result  of  this  contest  may 
in  some  respects  have  been  doubtful,  but  on  one  point 
at  least  it  was  clear.  It  had  extinguished  the  colonial 
theory  of  government  and  substituted  the  national. 
Hamilton  and  the  Federalists,  with  all  their  high 
qualities,  had  still  disbelieved  in  all  that  lay  beyond 
the  domain  of  experience.  But  experience,  as  Cole- 
ridge said,  is  like  the  stern-lights  of  a  ship,  illumining 
only  the  track  already  passed  over.  Jefferson,  with 
all  his  faults,  had  steered  for  the  open  sea.  Madison's 
war  had  impoverished  the  nation,  but  had  saved  its 
self-respect.  Henceforward  the  American  flag  was 
that  of  an  independent  people — a  people  ready  to 
submit  to  nothing,  even  from  England,  which  Eng- 
land would  not  tolerate  in  return.  And  it  so  hap- 
pened that  all  the  immediate  honor  of  this  increased 

364 


THE    ERA    OF    GOOD    FEELING 

self-respect  belonged,  or  seemed  to  belong,  to  the 
party  in  power.  Jefferson  was  the  most  pacific  of 
men,  except  Madison ;  both  dreaded  a  standing  army, 
and  shrank  with  reluctance  from  a  navy;  yet  the 
laurels  of  both  arms  of  the  service,  such  as  they  were, 
went  to  Madison  and  Jefferson.  The  Federalists, 
who  had  begged  for  a  navy  and  had  threatened  to 
raise  an  army  on  their  own  account,  now  got  no 
credit  for  either.  That  party  held,  on  the  whole, 
the  best  educated,  the  most  high-minded,  the  most 
solvent  part  of  the  nation ;  yet  it  had  been  wrecked 
by  its  own  want  of  faith.  When  in  the  Electoral 
College  Monroe  had  183  votes,  against  34  for  Rufus 
King,  it  was  plain  that  the  contest  was  at  an  end, 
and  that  the  nation  was  ready  to  be  soothed.  Mon- 
roe was  precisely  the  sedative  to  be  applied,  and  his 
journey  was  the  process  of  application. 

So  much  for  the  people;  but  there  were  also  anx- 
ieties to  be  quieted  among  the  nation's  statesmen. 
Not  only  did  the  people  need  to  learn  confidence  in 
their  leaders,  but  the  leaders  in  the  people.  It  was 
not  that  republican  government  itself  was  on  trial, 
but  that  its  scale  seemed  so  formidable.  Nobody 
doubted  that  it  was  a  thing  applicable  among  a  few 
mountain  communities,  like  those  of  Switzerland. 
What  even  the  Democratic  statesmen  of  that  day 
doubted — and  they  had  plenty  of  reason  for  the  fear 
— was  the  possibility  of  applying  self-government  to 
the  length  and  breadth  of  a  continent  peopled  by 
many  millions  of  men.  They  were  not  dismayed  by 
the  principle,  but  by  its  application ;  not  by  the  phi- 
losophy, but  the  geography.  Washington  himself, 
we  know,  was  opposed  to  undertaking  the  ownership 
of  the  Mississippi  River;  and  Monroe,  when  a  mem- 

365 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

ber  of  the  Virginia  Convention,  had  argued  against 
the  adoption  of  the  Federal  Constitution,  for  geo- 
graphical reasons.  "Consider,"  he  said,  "the  terri- 
tory lying  between  the  Atlantic  Ocean  and  the  Mis- 
sissippi. Its  extent  far  exceeds  that  of  the  German 
Empire.  It  is  larger  than  any  territory  that  ever 
was  under  any  one  free  government.  It  is  too  ex- 
tensive to  be  governed  but  by  a  despotic  monarchy." 
This  was  the  view  of  James  Monroe  in  1788,  at  a  time 
when  he  could  have  little  dreamed  of  ever  becoming 
President.  He  was  heard  with  respect,  for  he  had 
been  one  of  the  Virginia  committee-men  who  had 
transferred  the  northwestern  lands  to  the  United 
States  government,  and  he  was  one  of  the  few  who 
had  personally  visited  them.  Yet  he  had  these  fears, 
and  the  worst  of  the  alarm  was  that  it  had  some 
foundation.  But  for  the  unexpected  alliances  of  rail- 
way and  telegraph,  does  anybody  believe  that  Maine, 
Louisiana,  and  California  would  to-day  form  part  of 
the  same  nation?  In  the  mean  time,  while  waiting 
for  those  mighty  coadjutors,  the  journey  of  Monroe 
relieved  anxiety  in  a  very  different  manner,  by  re- 
vealing the  immense  strength  to  which  the  national 
feeling  had  already  grown.  At  any  rate,  after  this 
experience  he  expressed  no  more  solicitude.  In  his 
message  on  internal  improvements,  written  five  years 
after  his  journey,  he  described  the  American  system 
of  government  as  one  "capable  of  expansion  over  a 
vast  territory." 

Monroe  himself  was  now  fifty-nine  years  old,  and 
formed  in  physical  appearance  a  marked  contrast  to 
the  small  size  and  neat,  compact  figure  of  his  prede- 
cessor. He  was  six  feet  high,  broad-shouldered,  and 
rather    raw-boned,    with    gravish-blue    eyes,    whose 

366 


THE    ERA    OF    GOOD    FEELING 

frank  and  pleasing  expression  is  often  mentioned  by 
the  writers  of  the  period,  and  sometimes  cited  in  il- 
lustration of  Jefferson's  remark  that  Monroe  was  "a 
man  whose  soul  might  be  turned  inside  out  without 
discovering  a  blemish  to  the  world."  He  was  dig- 
nified and  courteous,  but  also  modest,  and  even  shy, 
so  that  his  prevailing  air  was  that  of  commonplace 
strength  and  respectable  mediocrity.  After  all  the 
political  excitements  of  the  past  dozen  years,  noth- 
ing could  be  more  satisfactory  than  this.  People  saw 
in  him  a  plain  Virginia  farmer  addressing  audiences 
still  mainly  agricultural.  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 
once  said  to  me,  when  looking  for  the  first  time  on 
John  P.  Hale,  of  New  Hampshire,  then  at  the  height 
of  a  rather  brief  eminence:  ''What  an  average  man 
he  is!  He  looks  just  like  five  hundred  other  men. 
That  must  be  the  secret  of  his  power."  It  was  pre- 
cisely thus  with  Monroe.  He  had  in  his  cabinet  men 
of  talents  far  beyond  his  own — Adams,  Calhoun, 
Crawford,  Wirt ;  Jefferson  and  Madison  yet  lived,  his 
friends  and  counsellors ;  Jackson,  Clay,  Webster,  and 
Benton  were  just  coming  forward  into  public  life ;  but 
none  of  all  these  gifted  men  could  have  reassured 
the  nation  by  their  mere  aspect,  in  travelling  through 
it,  as  he  did.  Each  of  these  men,  if  President,  would 
have  been  something  more  than  the  typical  official. 
Monroe  precisely  filled  the  chair,  and  stood  for  the 
office,  not  for  himself. 

He  left  Washington  June  2,  181 7,  accompanied 
only  by  his  private  secretary,  Mason,  and  by  Gen- 
eral Joseph  G.  Swift,  the  Chief  Engineer  of  the  War 
Department.  The  ostensible  object  of  his  jour- 
ney was  to  inspect  the  national  defences.  This  ex- 
plained his  choice  of  a  companion,  and  gave  him  at 

367 


HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

each  point  an  aim  beyond  the  reception  of  courtesies. 
With  this  nominal  errand  he  travelled  through  Mary- 
land to  New  York  City,  traversed  Connecticut  and 
Rhode  Island,  Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire,  and 
Maine,  then  a  district  only.  He  went  southward 
through  Vermont,  visited  the  fortifications  at  Platts- 
burg,  travelled  through  the  forests  to  the  St.  Law- 
rence, inspected  Sackett's  Harbor  and  Fort  Niagara ; 
went  to  Buffalo,  and  sailed  through  Lake  Erie  to 
Detroit.  Thence  he  turned  eastward  again,  return- 
ing through  Ohio,  Pennsylvania,  and  Maryland.  He 
reached  home  September  17th,  after  an  absence  of 
more  than  three  months. 

During  all  this  trip  there  occurred  not  one  circum- 
stance to  mar  the  reception  of  the  President,  though 
there  were  plenty  of  hardships  to  test  his  endurance. 
Everywhere  he  was  greeted  with  triumphal  arches, 
groups  of  school-children,  cavalcades  of  mounted 
citizens,  and  the  roar  of  cannon.  The  Governor  of 
Massachusetts,  by  order  of  the  legislature,  provided 
him  with  a  military  escort  from  border  to  border; 
no  other  State  apparently  did  this,  though  the  Gov- 
ernor of  New  Hampshire  apologized  for  not  having 
official  authority  to  follow  the  example.  Every- 
where there  were  addresses  of  welcome  by  eminent 
citizens.  Everywhere  the  President  made  answer. 
Clad  in  the  undress  uniform  of  a  Revolutionary  officer 
— blue  coat,  light  underclothes,  and  cocked  hat — he 
stood  before  the  people  a  portly  and  imposing  figure, 
well  representing  the  men  who  won  American  free- 
dom in  arms.  His  replies,  many  of  which  are  duly 
reported,  seem  now  laudably  commonplace  and  rea- 
sonably brief ;  but  they  were  held  at  the  time  to  be 
"elegant  and  impressive." 

368 


THE    ERA    OF    GOOD    FEELING 

We  see  a  lingering  trace  of  the  more  ceremonial 
period  of  Washington  and  Adams  when  the  semi- 
official historian  of  Monroe's  travels  reports  that  in 
approaching  Dartmouth,  New  Hampshire,  "  although 
the  road  was  shrouded  in  clouds  of  dust,   he  con- 
descended to  leave  his  carriage  and  make  his  entry  on 
horseback."     The  more  eminent  Federalist  leaders, 
except  H.  G.  Otis,  took  apparently  no  conspicuous 
part  in  the  reception;  but  their  place  was  supplied 
by   others.     Elder   Goodrich,   of   the    Enfield    (New 
Hampshire)  Shakers,  addressed  him  with,  "I,  James 
Goodrich,  welcome  James  Monroe  to  our  habitations" ; 
and  the  young  ladies  of  the  Windsor  (Vermont)  Fe- 
male Academy  closed  their  address  by  saying,  "  That 
success  may  crown  all  your  exertions  for  the  public 
good  is  the  ardent  wish  of  many  a  patriotic  though 
youthful   female   bosom."     Later,    when    traversing 
"the  majestic  forests"  near  Ogdensburg,  New  York, 
"  his  attention  was  suddenly  attracted  by  an  elegant 
collation,  fitted  up  in  a  superior  style  by  the  officers 
of  the  army  and  the  citizens  of  the  country.     He  par- 
took of  it  with  a  heart  beating  in  unison  with  those 
of  his  patriotic  countrymen  by  whom  he  was  sur- 
rounded, and  acknowledged  this  unexpected  and  ro- 
mantic civility  with  an  unaffected  and  dignified  com- 
plaisance." 

Philadelphia  had  at  this  time  a  population  of 
112,000  inhabitants;  New  York,  115,000;  Baltimore, 
55,000;  Boston,  40,000;  Providence,  10,000;  Hart- 
ford, 8000;  Pittsburg,  7000;  Cincinnati,  7000;  St. 
Louis,  3500;  Chicago  was  but  a  fort.  The  Ohio 
River  was  described  by  those  who  narrated  this 
journey  as  an  obscure  and  remote  stream  that  had 
"  for  nearly  six  thousand  years  rolled  in  silent  majesty 

369 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

through  the  towering  forests  of  the  New  World." 
11  It  would  not  be,"  says  a  writer  of  that  period,  "the 
madness  of  a  deranged  imagination  to  conclude  that 
this  stream  in  process  of  time  will  become  as  much 
celebrated  as  the  Ganges  of  Asia,  the  Nile  of  Africa, 
and  the  Danube  of  Europe.  In  giving  this  future 
importance  to  the  Ohio,  the  Mississippi  and  the 
Missouri  cannot  be  forgotten  as  exceeding  it  in  length 
and  in  importance.  These  astonishing  streams  may 
hereafter,  as  civilization  progresses  in  the  present 
wilds  of  the  American  republic,  become  rivals  to  the 
Ohio."  When  we  consider  that  the  region  thus 
vaguely  indicated  is  now  the  centre  of  population  for 
the  nation,  we  learn  what  a  little  world  it  was,  after 
all,  which  was  embraced  in  the  Presidential  tour  of 
James  Monroe.  Even  of  that  small  realm,  however, 
he  did  not  see  the  whole  during  these  travels.  We 
know  from  a  letter  of  Crawford  to  Gallatin,  quoted 
by  Mr.  Gilman,  that  a  good  deal  of  jealousy  was  felt 
in  the  southern  States  at  Monroe's  "  apparent  ac- 
quiescence in  the  seeming  man-worship ' '  at  the  North ; 
and  Crawford  thinks  that  while  the  President  *  had 
gained  in  health  by  the  trip,  he  had  "  lost  as  much  as 
he  had  gained  in  popularity."  The  gain  was,  how- 
ever, made  where  he  most  needed  it,  and  another  tour 
to  Augusta,  Nashville,  and  Louisville  soon  restored 
the  balance. 

The  President  being  established  at  the  seat  of 
government,  the  fruits  of  his  enlarged  popularity 
were  seen  in  the  tranquillity  and  order  of  his  admin- 
istration. The  most  fortunate  of  officials,  he  was 
aided  by  the  general  longing  for  peace.  He  was  yet 
more  strengthened  by  the  fact  that  he  was  at  the 
same  time  governing  through  a  Democratic  organiza- 

37o 


THE    ERA    OF    GOOD    FEELING 

tion  and  on  Federalist  principles.  Nominally  he  held 
the  legitimate  succession  to  Jefferson, .having  followed, 
like  Madison,  through  the  intermediate  position,  that 
of  Secretary  of  State.  But  when  it  came  to  political 
opinions,  we  can  now  see  that  all  which  Federalism 
had  urged — a  strong  government,  a  navy,  a  national 
bank,  a  protective  tariff,  internal  improvements,  a 
liberal  construction  of  the  Constitution — all  these  had 
become  also  Democratic  doctrines.  Were  it  not  for 
their  traditional  reverence  for  Jefferson's  name,  it 
would  sometimes  have  been  hard  to  tell  Madison  and 
Monroe  from  Federalists.  In  a  free  country,  when 
a  party  disappears,  it  is  usually  because  the  other 
side  has  absorbed  its  principles.  So  it  was  here,  and 
we  never  can  understand  the  extinction  of  Federal- 
ism unless  we  bear  this  fact  in  mind.  In  the  excite- 
ment of  contest  the  combatants  had  already  changed 
weapons,  and  Federalism  had  been  killed,  like  Laertes 
in  "Hamlet,"  by  its  own  sword.  For  the  time,  as 
Crawford  wrote,  all  were  Federalists,  all  Republi- 
cans. 

Henry  Clay,  who  remains  to  us  as  a  mere  tradition 
of  winning  manners  and  ready  eloquence,  was  almost 
unanimously  elected  and  re-elected  as  Speaker  of  the 
House.  But  Clay  was  a  Federalist  without  knowing 
it ;  he  wished  to  strengthen  the  army,  to  increase  the 
navy,  to  make  the  tariff  protective,  to  recognize  and 
support  the  South  American  republics.  General 
Jackson,  too,  the  chief  military  hero  of  the  period, 
developed  the  national  impulse  in  a  way  that  Jeffer- 
son would  once  have  disapproved,  by  entering  the 
territory  of  Spanish  Florida  (in  1818)  to  fight  the 
Seminoles,  and  by  putting  to  death  as  "outlaws  and 
pirates"  two  British  subjects,  Arbuthnot  and  Am- 

37i 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

brister,  who  aided  the  Indians.  Then  the  purchase  of 
Florida  for  five  millions  was  another  bold  step  on  the 
part  of  the  central  government,  following  a  precedent 
which  had  seemed  very  questionable  when  Jefferson 
had  annexed  Louisiana.  While  buying  this  the  na- 
tion yielded  up  all  claim  to  what  was  afterwards 
Texas;  and  all  these  events  built  up  more  and  more 
the  national  feeling — which  was  the  bequest  of  Fed- 
eralism— as  distinct  from  the  separate  State  feeling 
which  was  the  original  Democratic  stock  in  trade. 

It  is  the  crowning  proof  of  the  pacified  condition 
to  which  parties  were  coming  that  this  peace  survived 
what  would  have  been,  under  other  circumstances, 
a  signal  of  war — the  first  and  sudden  appearance  of 
the  vexed  question  of  slavery.  It  came  upon  the 
nation,  asjefferson  said,  "  like  a  fire-bell  in  the  night." 
It  had  slumbered  since  the  adoption  of  the  Constitu- 
tion, and  came  up  as  an  incident  of  the  great  emigra- 
tion westward.  For  a  time,  in  admitting  new  States, 
it  was  very  easy  to  regard  the  Ohio  River  as  a  sort  of 
dividing  line,  and  to  alternately  admit  a  new  Free 
State  above  it  and  a  new  Slave  State  below  it.  In 
this  way  had  successively  come  in  Louisiana  (1812), 
Indiana  (18 16),  Mississippi  (181 7),  Illinois  (18 18), 
Alabama  (18 19).  But  when  the  process  reached 
Maine  and  Missouri  the  struggle  began.  Should 
slavery  extend  beyond  the  Ohio  border  into  the  great 
Louisiana  purchase  ?  Again  was  every  aspect  of  the 
momentous  question  debated  with  ardor,  Rufus  King 
leading  one  side,  John  Randolph  the  other,  each  side 
invoking  the  traditions  of  the  fathers,  and  claiming 
to  secure  the  safety  of  the  nation.  "At  our  even- 
ing parties,"  says  John  Quincy  Adams  in  his  diary, 
"we  hear  of  nothing  but  the  Missouri  question  and 

372 


THE    ERA    OF    GOOD    FEELING 

Mr.  King's  speeches."  The  contest  was  ended  by 
Mr.  Clay's  great  effort  of  skill,  known  in  history  as  the 
Missouri  Compromise.  The  result  was  to  admit  both 
Maine  (1820)  and  Missouri  (182 1),  with  a  provision 
thenceforward  excluding  slavery  north  of  the  line  of 
360  30',  the  southern  boundary  of  Missouri.  John 
Randolph  called  it  "a  dirty  bargain,"  and  christened 
those  northern  men  who  had  formed  it  "dough- 
faces"— a  word  which  became  thereafter  a  part  of 
the  political  slang  of  the  nation. 

Monroe,  in  a  private  letter  written  about  this  time 
(February  15,  1820),  declared  his  belief  that  "the 
majority  of  States,  of  physical  force,  and  eventually 
of  Votes  in  both  Houses,"  would  be  ultimately  "on 
the  side  of  the  non-slave-holding  States."  As  a 
moderate  Virginia  slave-holder  he  recognized  this  as 
the  probable  condition  of  affairs,  1  On  the  other  hand, 
John  Quincy  Adams,  strong  in  antislavery  feeling, 
voted  for  the  compromise,  and  afterwards  expressed 
some  misgivings  about  it.  He  held  it  to  be  all  that 
could  have  been  effected  under  the  Constitution,  and 
he  shrank  from  risking  the  safety  of  the  Union.  "  If 
the  Union  must  be  dissolved,"  he  said,  "the  slavery 
question  is  precisely  the  question  upon  which  it  ought 
to  break.  For  the  present,  however,  this  contest  is  laid 
to  sleep."     And  it  slept  for  many  years. 

During  two  sessions  of  Congress  the  Missouri  ques- 
tion troubled  the  newly  found  quiet  of  the  nation, 
but  it  did  not  make  so  much  as  a  ripple  on  the  surface 
of  the  President's  popularity.  In  1820  the  re-elec- 
tion of  Monroe  would  have  been  absolutely  unani- 
mous had  not  one  dissatisfied  elector  given  his  vote 
for  John  Quincy  Adams,  the  tradition  being  that  this 
man  did  not  wish  any  other  President  to  rival  Wash- 

373 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

ington  in  unanimity  of  choice.  The  Vice-president, 
Daniel  D.  Tompkins,  was  re-elected  with  less  com- 
plete cordiality,  there  being  fourteen  votes  against 
him  in  the  Electoral  College.  Then  followed  the 
second  administration  of  Monroe,  to  which  was  given, 
perhaps  by  the  President  himself,  a  name  which  has 
secured  for  the  whole  period  a  kind  of  peaceful  emi- 
nence. It  was  probably  fixed  and  made  permanent 
by  two  lines  in  Halleck's  once  famous  poem  of 
"Alnwick  Castle,"  evidently  written  during  the  poet's 
residence  in  England  in  1822-23.  Speaking  of  the 
change  from  the  feudal  to  the  commercial  spirit,  he 
says: 

" 'Tis  what  'our  President,'  Monroe, 

Has  called  'the  era  of  good  feeling.' 

The  Highlander,  the  bitterest  foe 

To  modern  laws,  has  felt  their  blow, 

Consented  to  be  taxed,  and  vote, 

And  put  on  pantaloons  and  coat, 
And  leave  off  cattle-stealing." 

It  would  seem  from  this  verse  that  Monroe  himself 
was  credited  with  the  authorship  of  the  phrase;  but 
I  have  been  unable  to  find  it  in  his  published  speeches 
or  messages,  and  it  is  possible  that  it  may  be  of  news- 
paper origin,  and  that  Halleck,  writing  in  England, 
may  have  fathered  it  on  the  President  himself.  This 
is  the  more  likely  because  even  so  mild  a  flavor  of 
facetiousness  as  this  was  foreign  to  the  character  of 
Monroe. 

Under  these  soothing  influences,  at  any  rate,  the 
nation,  and  especially  its  capital  city,  made  some 
progress  in  the  amenities  and  refinements  of  life.  It 
was  a  period  when  the  social  etiquette  of  Washington 
City  was  going  through  some  changes ;  the  population 

374 


THE    ERA    OF    GOOD    FEELING 

was  growing  larger,  the  classes  were  less  distinct,  the 
social  duties  of  high  officials  more  onerous.  The 
diary  of  John  Quincy  Adams  records  cabinet  meet- 
ings devoted  to  such  momentous  questions  as  who 
should  make  the  first  call,  and  who  should  be  in- 
cluded in  the  official  visiting  -  lists.  Mrs.  Monroe, 
without  a  cabinet  council,  made  up  her  own  mind  to 
retrench  some  of  those  profuse  civilities  with  which 
her  predecessor  had  fatigued  herself.  Mrs.  Madison, 
a  large,  portly,  kindly  dame,  had  retired  from  office 
equally  regretted  by  the  poor  of  Washington  and  by 
its  high  life;  but  she  had  gained  this  popularity  at 
a  severe  cost.  She  had  called  on  all  conspicuous 
strangers;  Mrs.  Monroe  intended  to  call  on  nobody. 
Mrs.  Madison  had  been  always  ready  for  visitors 
when  at  home ;  her  successor  proposed  not  to  receive 
them  except  at  her  regular  levees.  The  ex-Presi- 
dentess  had  presided  at  her  husband's  dinner-parties, 
and  had  invited  the  wives  of  all  the  men  who  were  to 
be  guests ;  Mrs.  Monroe  stayed  away  from  the  dinner- 
parties, and  so  the  wives  were  left  at  home.  Add  to 
this  that  her  health  was  by  no  means  strong,  and  it 
is  plain  that  there  was  great  ground  for  a  spasm  of 
unpopularity.  She,  however,  outlived  it,  re-estab- 
lished her  social  relations,  gave  fortnightly  receptions, 
and  won  much  admiration,  which  she  probably  de- 
served. She  was  by  birth  a  Miss  Kortwright,  of  New 
York,  a  niece  of  General  Knox,  and  when  she  accom- 
panied her  husband  on  his  embassy  to  Paris  she  had 
there  been  known  as  "  la  belle  Americaine."  She  was 
pronounced  by  observers  in  later  life  to  be  "a  most 
regal-looking  lady,"  and  her  manners  were  described 
as  "very  gracious."  At  her  final  levee  in  the  White 
House  "her  dress  was  superb  black  velvet;  neck  and 

375 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

arms  bare,  and  beautifully  formed ;  her  hair  in  puffs, 
and  dressed  high  on  the  head,  and  ornamented  with 
white  ostrich  plumes;  around  her  neck  an  elegant 
pearl  necklace/ '  Her  two  fair  daughters — her  only 
children,  Mrs.  Hay  and  Mrs.  Gouverneur — assisted  at 
this  reception. 

Such  was  the  hostess,  but  her  drawing-rooms,  by 
all  contemporary  accounts,  afforded  a  curious  social 
medley.  Trhe  well-defined  gentry  of  the  Revolution- 
ary period  was  disappearing,  and  the  higher  average 
of  dress  and  manners  had  not  begun  to  show  itself — - 
that  higher  average  which  has  since  been  rapidly  de- 
veloped by  the  influence  of  railroads  and  newspapers, 
joined  with  much  foreign  travel  and  a  great  increase 
in  wealth.  It  was  a  period  when  John  Randolph  was 
allowed  to  come  to  dinner-parties  "ina  rough,  coarse, 
short  hunting-coat,  with  small-clothes  and  boots,  and 
over  his  boots  a  pair  of  coarse  coating  leggings,  tied 
with  strings  around  his  legs."  At  Presidential  re- 
ceptions, in  the  words  of  an  eye-witness,  "ambassa- 
dors and  consuls,  members  of  Congress  and  officers 
of  the  army  and  navy,  greasy  boots  and  silk  stock- 
ings, Virginia  buckskins  and  Yankee  cowhides,  all 
mingled  in  ill-assorted  and  fantastic  groups." 

Houses  in  Washington  had  become  much  larger 
than  formerly,  and  a  similar  expansion  had  been  seen 
in  the  scale  of  entertainments.  It  is  not  uncommon 
to  find  records  of  evening  parties,  at  which  five  or 
six  hundred  persons  were  present,  filling  five  or  six 
rooms.  When  John  Quincy  Adams,  then  Secretary 
of  State,  gave  a  reception  to  the  newly  arrived  hero, 
General  Andrew  Jackson,  eight  rooms  were  opened, 
and  there  were  a  thousand  guests.  It  was  regarded 
as  the  finest  entertainment  ever  given  in  Washington, 

376 


THE    ERA    OF    GOOD    FEELING 

and  showed,  in  the  opinion  of  Senator  Mills,  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, ''taste,  elegance,  and  good  sense"  on  the 
part  of  Mrs.  Adams.  Elsewhere  he  pronounces  her 
"a  very  pleasant  and  agreeable  woman,"  but  adds, 
"the  Secretary  has  no  talent  to  entertain  a  mixed 
company,  either  by  conversation  or  manners." 
Other  agreeable  houses  were  that  of  Bagot,  the  Brit- 
ish Minister,  whose  wife  was  a  niece  of  the  Duke  of 
Wellington,  and  that  of  M.  Hyde  de  Neuville,  the 
French  Minister,  each  house  being  opened  for  a  week- 
ly reception,  whereas  the  receptions  at  the  White 
House  took  place  but  once  a  fortnight.  At  these  en- 
tertainments they  had  music,  cards,  and  dancing — 
country-dances,  cotillions,  with  an  occasional  Scotch 
reel.  It  was  noticed  with  some  surprise  that  even 
New  England  ladies  would  accept  the  hospitalities  of 
Madame  de  Neuville  on  Saturday  evenings,  and  would 
dance  on  what  they  had  been  educated  to  regard  as 
holy  time. 

Among  the  most  conspicuous  of  these  ladies  was 
Mrs.  Jonathan  Russell,  of  Boston,  full  of  sense  and 
information,  but  charged  with  some  eccentricities  of 
costume;  the  reigning  belle  seems  to  have  been  the 
wife  of  Commodore  Hull;  and  one  of  the  most  con- 
spicuous figures  was  Miss  Randolph,  of  Virginia, 
daughter  of  the  governor  of  that  State  and  grand- 
daughter of  ex-President  Jefferson — a  damsel  who 
had  plenty  of  brains,  and  could  talk  politics  with  any- 
body, but  was  no  favorite  with  the  ladies.  Among 
the  men,  John  Randolph  was  the  most  brilliant  and 
interesting,  and  all  the  more  so  from  his  wayward- 
ness and  insolence.  In  public  life  he  preceded  Cal- 
houn in  the  opinions  which  have  made  the  latter  fa- 
mous; and  in  private  life  he  could,  if  he  chose,  be  de- 

*s  377 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

lightful.  "He  is  now,"  Mr.  Mills  writes  to  his  wife 
in  1822,  "what  he  used  to  be  in  his  best  days — in 
good  spirits,  with  fine  manners  and  the  most  fasci- 
nating conversation.  I  would  give  more  to  have 
you  see  him  than  any  man  living  on  the  earth." 
Add  to  these  Clay,  Webster,  Crawford,  Van  Buren, 
Rufus  King,  and  many  other  men  of  marked  ability, 
but  of  varied  social  aptitude,  and  we  have  the  Wash- 
ington of  that  day.  By  way  of  background  there 
was  the  ever-present  shadow  of  slavery;  and  there 
were  occasional  visits  from  Indian  delegations,  who 
gave  war-dances  before  the  White  House  in  the  full 
glory  of  nakedness  and  paint. 

In  considering  this  social  development  we  must  re- 
member that  under  Monroe's  administration  Ameri- 
can literature  may  be  said  to  have  had  its  birth. 
Until  about  this  time  prose  and  verse  were  mainly 
political;  and  the  most  liberal  modern  collection 
would  hardly  now  borrow  a  single  poem  from  the 
little  volume  called  the  Columbian  Oracle,  in  which 
were  gathered,  during  the  year  1794,  the  choicest  ef- 
fusions of  D wight  and  Humphreys,  Barlow  and  Fre- 
neau.  Fisher  Ames,  perhaps  the  most  accomplished 
of  the  Federalists,  and  the  only  one  who  took  the 
pains  to  make  "American  Literature"  the  theme  of 
an  esssay,  had  declared,  in  1808,  that  such  a  literary 
product  would  never  exist  until  the  course  of  democ- 
racy should  be  ended  and  despotism  should  have 
taken  its  place.  "  Shall  we  match  Joel  Barlow  against 
Homer  or  Hesiod?"  he  asked.  "Can  Thomas  Paine 
contend  with  Plato  ? .  .  .  Liberty  has  never  lasted  long 
in  a  democracy,  nor  has  it  ever  ended  in  anything 
better  than  despotism.  With  the  change  of  our  gov- 
ernment, our  manners  and  sentiments  will  change. 

378 


THE    ERA    OF    GOOD    FEELING 

As  soon  as  our  emperor  has  destroyed  his  rivals  and 
established  order  in  his  army,  he  will  desire  to  see 
splendor  in  his  court,  and  to  occupy  his  subjects  with 
the  cultivation  of  the  sciences." 

It  was  something  when  the  matter  of  a  national 
literature  came  to  be  treated,  not  thus  despairingly, 
but  jocosely.  This  progress  found  a  voice,  four  years 
later,  in  Edward  Everett,  who,  in  his  Cambridge  poem 
on  "American  Poets"  (1812),  prophesied  with  a  little 
more  of  hope.  He  portrayed,  indeed,  with  some  hu- 
mor, the  difficulties  of  the  native  bard,  since  he  must 
deal  with  the  Indian  names,  of  which  nobody  then 
dreamed  that  they  could  ever  be  thought  tuneful: 

"A  different  scene  our  native  poet  shames 
With  barbarous  titles  and  with  savage  names. 
When  the  warm  bard  his  country's  worth  would  tell, 
Lo  Mas-sa-chu-setts'  length  his  lines  must  swell. 
Would  he  the  gallant  tales  of  war  rehearse, 
'Tis  graceful  Bunker  fills  the  polished  verse. 
Sings  he,  dear  land,  those  lakes  and  streams  of  thine, 
Some  mild  Memphremagog  murmurs  in  his  line, 
Some  Ameriscoggin  dashes  by  his  way, 
Or  smooth  Connecticut  softens  in  his  lay. 
Would  he  one  verse  of  easy  movement  frame, 
The  map  will  meet  him  with  a  hopeless  name; 
Nor  can  his  pencil  sketch  one  perfect  act 
But  vulgar  history  mocks  him  with  a  fact." 

Still,  he  thought,  something  might  be  done  by- 
and-by,  even  with  materials  so  rough: 

"Oh  yes!  in  future  days  our  western  lyres, 
Tuned  to  new  themes,  shall  glow  with  purer  fires, 
Clothed  with  the  charms,  to  grace  their  later  rhyme, 
Of  every  former  age  and  foreign  clime. 
Then  Homer's  arms  shall  ring  in  Bunker's  shock, 
And  Virgil's  wanderer  land  on  Plymouth  rock; 
379 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Then  Dante's  knights  before  Quebec  shall  fall, 
And  Charles's  trump  on  trainband  chieftains  call. 
Our  mobs  shall  wear  the  wreaths  of  Tasso's  Moors, 
And  Barbary's  coast  shall  yield  to  Baltimore's. 
Here  our  own  bays  some  native  Pope  shall  grace, 
And  lovelier  beauties  fill  Belinda's  place." 

It  was  all  greatly  applauded,  no  doubt,  as  in  the 
best  vein  of  the  classic  Everett;  and  it  was  in  Mon- 
roe's time,  five  or  ten  years  later,  that  the  fulfilment 
actually  began.  He  certainly  could  not  be  called  an 
emperor,  nor  could  his  court  be  termed  splendid ;  yet 
it  was  under  this  plain  potentate  that  a  national  lit- 
erature was  born. 

The  Englishman  Sydney  Smith  wrote  in  1818,  one 
year  after  Monroe's  accession  to  office:  "There  does 
not  appear  to  be  in  America  at  this  time  one  man 
of  any  considerable  talents."  But  an  acuter  and 
severer  literary  critic,  Lord  Jeffrey,  wrote,  four  years 
later  (January  27,  1822):  "The  true  hope  of  the 
world  is  with  you  in  America — in  your  example  now, 
and  in  fifty  years  more,  I  hope,  your  influence  and 
actual  power."  It  was  midway  between  these  two 
dates  that  the  veteran  publisher  Mr.  S.  G.  Goodrich, 
in  his  Recollections,  placed  the  birth- time  of  a 
national  literature.  '"During  this  period,"  he  says, 
"we  began  to  have  confidence  in  American  genius, 
and  to  dream  of  literary  ambition."  The  North 
American  Review  was  established  in  181 5;  Bryant's 
Thanatopsis  appeared  in  181 7;  Irving' s  Sketch  Book 
in  1 8 18;  Cooper's  Spy  in  1822.  When  Monroe  went 
out  of  office,  in  1825,  Emerson  was  teaching  school, 
Whittier  was  at  work  on  his  father's  farm,  Haw- 
thorne and  Longfellow  were  about  to  graduate  from 
college;  but  American  literature  was  born. 

380 


THE    ERA    OF    GOOD    FEELING 

People  still  maintained— as  a  few  yet  hold — that 
these  various  authors  succeeded  in  spite  of  the  na- 
tional atmosphere,  not  by  means  of  it.  It  seems  to 
me  easy  to  show,  on  the  contrary,  that  they  all  im- 
pressed themselves  on  the  world  chiefly  by  using  the 
materials  they  found  at  home.  Longfellow,  at  first 
steeped  in  European  influences,  gained  in  strength 
from  the  time  he  touched  his  native  soil;  nor  did  he 
find  any  difficulty  in  weaving  into  melodious  verse 
those  Indian  names  which  had  appalled  Everett. 
Irving,  the  most  exotic  of  all  these  writers,  really 
made  his  reputation  by  his  use  of  what  has  been  call- 
ed "the  Knickerbocker  legend."  He  did  not  create 
the  traditions  of  the  Hudson;  they  created  him. 
Mrs.  Josiah  Quincy,  sailing  up  that  river  in  1786, 
when  Irving  was  a  child  three  years  old,  records  that 
the  captain  of  the  sloop  had  a  legend,  either  super- 
natural or  traditional,  for  every  scene,  "and  not  a 
mountain  reared  its  head  unconnected  with  some 
marvellous  story."  The  legends  were  all  there  ready 
for  Irving,  just  as  the  New  England  legends  were 
waiting  for  Whittier.  Once  let  the  man  of  genius 
be  born,  and  his  own  soil  was  quite  able  to  furnish 
the  food  that  should  rear  him. 

Apart  from  this  social  and  literary  progress,  two 
especial  points  marked  the  administration  of  Monroe, 
both  being  matters  whose  importance  turned  out  to 
be  far  greater  than  any  one  had  suspected.  The 
first  was  the  introduction  of  a  definite  term  of  office 
for  minor  civil  officers.  When  the  First  Congress 
asserted  the  right  of  the  President  to  remove  such 
officials  at  all,  it  was  thought  a  dangerous  power.  In 
practice  that  power  had  been  but  little  used,  and 
scarcely  ever  for  political  purposes,  when  William  H. 

381 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Crawford,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  was  touched  with 
Presidential  ambition.  Most  of  the  minor  officials 
being  then  in  his  department,  he  conceived  the  plan 
of  pushing  through  a  bill  to  make  them  removable 
every  four  years.  It  seemed  harmless.  The  ap- 
parent object  was  to  get  rid  of  untrustworthy  rev- 
enue officers.  It  was  enacted  with  so  little  discus- 
sion that  Benton's  Abridgment  of  Debates  does  not 
mention  its  passage.  It  was  signed  by  the  Presi- 
dent "unwarily,"  as  John  Quincy  Adams  tells  us,  on 
May  15,  1820;  and  instantly,  as  the  same  authority 
asserts,  all  the  Treasury  officials  became  "ardent 
Crawfordites."  Jefferson  and  Madison  utterly  dis- 
approved of  the  new  system;  so  did  Adams,  so  did 
Calhoun,  so  did  Webster ;  but  it  remained  unchanged 
until  the  passage  of  the  Civil  Service  Act  in  1883.    • 

It  so  happens  that  this  law  has  not  usually  been 
identified  with  the  period  of  Monroe;  it  was  enact- 
ed so  quietly  that  its  birthday  was  forgotten.  Not 
so  with  another  measure,  which  was  not  indeed  a 
law,  but  merely  the  laying  down  of  a  principle,  ever 
since  known  as  the  "Monroe  doctrine";  this  being 
simply  a  demand  of  non-interference  by  foreign  na- 
tions with  the  affairs  of  the  two  American  continents. 
There  has  been  a  good  deal  of  dispute  as  to  the  real 
authorship  of  this  announcement,  Charles  Francis 
Adams  claiming  it  for  his  father,  and  Charles  Sumner 
for  the  English  statesman  Canning.  Dr.  Daniel  C. 
Oilman,  however,  in  his  memoir  of  President  Monroe, 
has  shown  with  exhaustive  research  that  this  doctrine 
had  grown  up  gradually  into  a  national  tradition  be- 
fore Monroe's  time,  and  that  he  merely  formulated 
it  and  made  it  a  matter  of  distinct  record.  The  whole 
statement  is  contained  in  a  few  detached  passages  of 

382 


THE    ERA    OP    GOOD    FEELING 

his  message  of  December  2,  1823.  In  this  he  an- 
nounces that  "the  American  continents,  by  the  free 
and  independent  condition  which  they  have  assumed 
and  maintain,  are  not  to  be  considered  as  subjects  for 
colonization  by  European  powers."  Further  on  he 
points  out  that  the  people  of  the  United  States  have 
kept  aloof  from  European  dissensions,  and  ask  only 
in  return  that  North  and  South  America  should  be 
equally  let  alone.  "We  should  consider  any  attempt 
on  their  part  to  extend  their  system  to  any  portion 
of  this  hemisphere  as  dangerous  to  our  peace  and 
safety"  ;  and  while  no  objection  is  made  to  any  exist- 
ing colony  or  dependency  of  theirs,  yet  any  further 
intrusion  or  interference  would  be  regarded  as  "the 
manifestation  of  an  unfriendly  spirit  towards  the 
United  States."  This,  in  brief,  is  the  "Monroe  doc- 
trine" as  originally  stated;  and  it  will  always  remain 
a  singular  fact  that  this  President — the  least  original 
or  commanding  of  those  who  early  held  that  office — 
should  yet  be  the  only  one  whose  name  is  identified 
with  the  most  distinctive  doctrine  regarding  Ameri- 
can foreign  relations. 

Apart  from  this,  Monroe's  messages,  which  fill  as 
many  pages  as  those  of  any  two  of  his  predecessors, 
are  conspicuously  hard  reading;  and,  the  only  por- 
tions to  which  a  student  of  the  present  day  can  turn 
with  any  fresh  interest  are  those  which  measure  the 
steady  progress  of  the  nation.  "Twenty-five  years 
ago,"  he  could  justly  say — looking  back  upon  his 
own  first  diplomatic  achievement — "the  river  Mis- 
sissippi was  shut  up,  and  our  western  brethren  had 
no  outlet  for  their  commerce.  What  has  been  the 
progress  since  that  time?  The  river  has  not  only 
become  the  property  of  the  United  States  from  its 

383 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED     STATES 

source  to  the  ocean,  with  all  its  tributary  streams 
(with  the  exception  of  the  upper  part  of  the  Red 
River  only),  but  Louisiana,  with  a  fair  and  liberal 
boundary  on  the  western  side  and  the  Floridas  on 
the  eastern,  have  been  ceded  to  us.  The  United 
States  now  enjoy  the  complete  and  uninterrupted 
sovereignty  over  the  whole  territory  from  St.  Croix 
to  the  Sabine."  This  was  written  March  4,  182 1. 
Nevertheless,  the  President  could  not,  even  then, 
give  his  sanction  to  any  national  efforts  for  the  im- 
provement of  this  vast  domain;  and  he  vetoed,  dur- 
ing the  following  year,  the "  Cumberland  Road  "bill, 
which  would  have  led  the  way,  he  thought,  to  a 
wholly  unconstitutional  system  of  internal  improve- 
ments. With  this  exception  his  administration  came 
into  no  very  marked  antagonism  to  public  senti- 
ment, and  even  in  dealing  with  this  he  went  to  no 
extremes,  but  expressed  willingness  that  the  national 
road  should  be  repaired,  not  extended. 

And  while  he  looked  upon  the  past  progress  of  the 
nation  with  wonder,  its  destiny  was  to  him  a  sealed 
book.  Turning  from  all  this  record  of  past  surprises, 
he  could  find  no  better  plan  for  the  future  develop- 
ment of  the  post-office  department,  for  instance,  than 
to  suggest  that  all  the  mails  of  the  nation  might 
profitably  be  carried  thenceforward  on  horseback. 
As  a  crowning  instance  of  how  little  a  tolerably  en- 
lightened man  may  see  into  the  future,  it  would  be 
a  pity  not  to  quote  the  passage  from  his  veto  message 
of  May  4,  1822: 

"  Unconnected  with  passengers  and  other  objects,  it  can- 
not be  doubted  that  the  mail  itself  may  be  carried  in  every 
part  of  our  Union,  with  nearly  as  much  economy  and  greater 
despatch,  on  horseback,  than  in  a  stage;  and  in  many  parts 

384 


THE    ERA    OF    GOOD    FEELING 

with  much  greater.  In  every  part  of  the  Union  in  which 
stages  can  be  preferred  the  roads  are  sufficiently  good,  pro- 
vided those  which  serve  for  every  other  purpose  will  ac- 
commodate them.  In  every  other  part,  where  horses  alone 
are  used,  if  other  people  pass  them  on  horseback,  surely 
the  mail-carrier  can.  For  an  object  so  simple  and  so  easy 
in  the  execution  it  would  doubtless  excite  surprise  if  it 
should  be  thought  proper  to  appoint  commissioners  to  lay 
off  the  country  on  a  great  scheme  of  improvement,  with  the 
power  to  shorten  distances,  reduce  heights,  level  moun- 
tains, and  pave  surfaces." 

Those  who  have  traversed  on  horseback,  even 
within  a  generation,  those  miry  Virginia  roads  and 
those  treacherous  fords  with  which  President  Mon- 
roe was  so  familiar,  will  best  appreciate  this  project 
for  the  post-office  accommodations  of  a  continent — a 
plan  "so  simple  and  easy  in  the  execution."  Since 
then  the  country  has  indeed  been  laid  off  "in  a  great 
scheme  of  improvement,"  distances  have  been  short- 
ened, heights  reduced,  and  surfaces  paved,  even  as 
he  suggested,  but  under  circumstances  which  no 
President  in  1822  could  possibly  have  conjectured. 
Indeed,  it  was  not  till  the  following  administration, 
that  of  John  Quincy  Adams,  that  the  first  large  im- 
pulse of  expansion  was  really  given  and  the  great 
wTestern  march  began. 


XVII 
THE    GREAT    WESTERN    MARCH 

THE  four  years'  administration  of  John  Quincy 
Adams  is  commonly  spoken  of  as  a  very  unin- 
teresting period,  but  it  was  in  one  respect  more  im- 
portant than  the  twenty  years  that  went  before  it 
or  the  ten  years  that  followed.  For  the  first  time 
the  inhabitants  of  the  United  States  began  to  learn 
in  how  very  large  a  country  they  lived.  From  oc- 
cupying a  mere  strip  of  land  on  the  Atlantic  they 
had  spread  already  through  New  York  and  Ohio; 
but  it  was  by  detached  emigrations,  of  which  the 
nation  was  hardly  conscious,  by  great  single  waves 
of  population  sweeping  here  and  there.  After  1825, 
this  development  became  a  self-conscious  and  delib- 
erate thing,  recognized  and  legislated  for,  though 
never  systematically  organized  by  the  nation.  When, 
between  1820  and  1830,  Michigan  Territory  increased 
260  per  cent.,  Illinois  180  per  cent.,  Arkansas  Terri- 
tory 142  per  cent.,  and  Indiana  133  per  cent.,  it  in- 
dicated not  a  mere  impulse  but  a  steady  progress, 
not  a  wave  but  a  tide.  Now  that  we  are  accustomed 
to  the  vast  statistics  of  to-day,  it  may  not  seem  ex- 
citing to  know  that  the  population  of  the  whole  na- 
tion rose  from  nearly  ten  millions  (9,633,822)  in  1820 
to  nearly  thirteen  (12,866,020)  in  1830;  but  this  gain 
of  one-third  was  at  the  time  the  most  astounding 

386 


THE  GREAT  WESTERN  MARCH 

demonstration  of  national  progress.  It  enables  us 
to  understand  the  immense  importance  attached  in 
John  Quincy  Adams's  time  to  a  phrase  now  common- 
place and  almost  meaningless — "  internal  improve- 
ments." It  is  true  that  during  his  term  of  office 
more  commercial  treaties  were  negotiated  than  under 
all  his  predecessors;  but  this,  after  all,  was  a  minor 
benefit.  The  foreign  commerce  of  the  United  States 
is  now  of  itself,  comparatively  speaking,  subordinate ; 
it  is  our  vast  internal  development  that  makes  us  a 
nation.  It  is  as  the  great  epoch  of  internal  improve- 
ments that  the  four  years  from  1825  to  1829  will  for- 
ever be  momentous  in  the  history  of  the  United  States. 
In  1825  the  nation  was  in  the  position  of  a  young 
man  who  has  become  aware  that  he  owns  a  vast 
estate,  but  finds  it  to  be  mostly  unproductive,  and 
hardly  even  marketable.  Such  a  person  sometimes 
hits  upon  an  energetic  agent,  who  convinces  him  that 
the  essential  thing  is  to  build  a  few  roads,  bridge  a 
few  streams,  and  lay  out  some  building  lots.  It  was 
just  in  this  capacity  of  courageous  adviser  that  John 
Quincy  Adams  was  quite  ready  to  offer  himself.  On 
the  day  of  his  inauguration  the  greater  part  of  Ohio 
was  yet  covered  with  forests,  and  Illinois  was  a  wilder- 
ness. The  vast  size  of  the  country  was  still  a  source 
rather  of  anxiety  than  of  pride.  Monroe  had  ex- 
pressed the  fear  that  no  republican  government  could 
safely  control  a  nation  reaching  so  far  as  the  Mis- 
sissippi; and  Livingston,  after  negotiating  for  the 
purchase  of  Louisiana,  had  comforted  himself  with 
the  thought  that  a  large  part  of  it  might  probably  be 
resold.  At  that  time  this  enormous  annexation  was 
thought  to  endanger  the  very  existence  of  the  origi- 
nal thirteen  States. 

387 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

This  was  perhaps  nowhere  more  frankly  stated  than 
by  an  able  Four th-of- July  orator  at  Salem,  Massa- 
chusetts, in  1813,  Benjamin  R.  Nichols.  He  declares, 
in  this  address,  that  to  admit  to  the  Union  new 
States  formed  out  of  new  territory  is  "to  set  up  a 
principle  which,  if  submitted  to,  will  make  us  more 
dependent  than  we  were  as  colonies  of  Great  Britain. 
If  a  majority  of  Congress  have  a  right  of  making  new 
States  where  they  please,  we  shall  probably  soon 
hear  of  States  formed  for  us  in  East  and  West  Florida ; 
and,  should  it  come  within  the  scope  of  the  policy  of 
our  rulers,  of  others  as  far  as  the  Pacific  Ocean.  If 
all  this  be  right,  the  consequence  is  that  the  people 
of  New  England,  in  case  of  any  disturbances  in  these 
newly  created  States,  may,  under  pretences  of  sup- 
pressing insurrections,  be  forced  to  march,  in  obedi- 
ence to  the  Constitution,  to  the  remotest  corner  of 
the  globe."  In  other  words,  that  which  now  makes 
the  crowning  pride  of  an  American  citizen,  that  the 
States  of  the  Union  are  spread  from  the  Atlantic  to 
the  Pacific,  was  then  held  up  by  a  patriotic  Federal- 
ist as  the  very  extreme  of  danger.  The  antidote  to 
this  deadly  peril,  the  means  of  establishing  some 
communication  with  these  "remotest  corners  of  the 
globe,"  had  necessarily  to  be  found,  first  of  all,  in 
internal  improvements.  At  least,  under  these  cir- 
cumstances of  alarm,  a  highway  or  two  might  be  held 
a  reasonable  proposition;  and  the  new  President,  in 
his  inaugural  address,  approached  the  subject  with 
something  of  the  lingering  stateliness  of  those  days: 

4 '  The  magnificence  and  splendor  of  their  public  works  are 
among  the  imperishable  glories  of  the  ancient  republics. 
The  roads  and  aqueducts  of  Rome  have  been  the  admira- 
tion of  all  after- ages,  and  have  survived  thousands  of  years, 

388 


THE  GREAT  WESTERN  MARCH 

after  all  her  conquests  have  been  swallowed  up  in  despot- 
ism or  become  the  spoil  of  barbarians.  Some  diversity  of 
opinion  has  prevailed  with  regard  to  the  powers  of  Congress 
for  legislation  upon  subjects  of  this  nature.  The  most  re- 
spectful deference  is  due  to  doubts  originating  in  pure. pa- 
triotism, and  sustained  by  venerated  authority.  But  nearly 
twenty  years  have  passed  since  the  construction  of  the  first 
national  road  was  commenced.  The  authority  for  its  con- 
struction was  then  unquestioned.  To  how  many  thousands 
of  our  countrymen  has  it  proved  a  benefit  ?  To  what  single 
individual  has  it  ever  proved  an  injury?" 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that  when  John 
Quincy  Adams  became  President  the  nation  had 
been  governed  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  by  Demo- 
cratic administrations,  acting  more  and  more  on 
Federalist  principles.  The  tradition  of  State  rights 
had  steadily  receded,  and  the  reality  of  a  strong  and 
expanding  nation  had  taken  its  place.  The  very 
men  who  had  at  first  put  into  the  most  definite  shape 
these  State  -  rights  opinions  had,  by  their  action, 
done  most  to  overthrow  them,  Jefferson  above  all. 
By  the  purchase  of  Louisiana  he  had,  perhaps  un- 
consciously, done  more  than  any  President  before 
him  to  make  national  feeling  permanent.  Having, 
by  a  happy  impulse,  and  in  spite  of  all  his  own 
theories,  enormously  enlarged  the  joint  territory,  he 
had  recognized  the  need  of  opening  and  developing 
the  new  possession ;  he  had  set  the  example  of  pro- 
posing national  appropriations  for  roads,  canals,  and 
even  education;  and  had  given  his  sanction  (March 
24,  1806)  to  building  a  national  road  from  Maryland 
to  Ohio,  first  obtaining  the  consent  of  the  States 
through  which  it  was  to  pass.  To  continue  this 
policy  would,  he  admitted,  require  constitutional 
amendments,  but  in  his  closing  message  he  favored 

389 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

such  alterations.  It  was  but  a  step  from  favoring 
constitutional  amendments  for  this  purpose  to  doing 
without  them;  Jefferson,  Madison,  Monroe  had  done 
the  one,  John  Quincy  Adams  did  the  other. 

Of  course  it  took  the  nation  by  surprise.  Noth- 
ing astonishes  people  more  than  to  be  taken  at  their 
word  and  have  their  own  theories  energetically  put 
in  practice.  Others  had  talked  in  a  general  way 
about  internal  improvements;  under  President  Mon- 
roe there  had  even  been  created  (April  30,  1824)  a 
national  board  to  plan  them ;  but  John  Quincy  Adams 
really  meant  to  have  them;  and  his  very  first  mes- 
sage looked  formidable  to  those  who  supposed  that 
because  he  had  broken  with  the  Federalists  he  was 
therefore  about  to  behave  like  an  old-fashioned 
Democrat.  In  truth  he  was  more  new-fashioned 
than  anybody.  This  is  the  way  he  committed  him- 
self in  this  first  message : 

"While  foreign  nations,  less  blessed  with  that  freedom 
which  is  power  than  ourselves,  are  advancing  with  gigantic 
strides  in  the  career  of  public  improvement,  were  we  to 
slumber  in  indolence,  or  fold  up  our  arms  and  proclaim 
to  the  world  that  we  are  palsied  by  the  will  of  our  constitu- 
ents, would  it  not  be  to  cast  away  the  bounties  of  Provi- 
dence, and  doom  ourselves  to  perpetual  inferiority?  In  the 
course  of  the  year  now  drawing  to  its  close  we  have  taken, 
under  the  auspices  and  at  the  expense  of  one  State  of  this 
Union,  a  new  university  unfolding  its  portals  to  the  sons  of 
science,  and  holding  up  the  torch  of  human  improvement  to 
eyes  that  seek  the  light.  We  have  seen,  under  the  persevering 
and  enlightened  enterprise  of  another  State,  the  waters  of 
our  Western  lakes  mingle  with  those  of  the  ocean.  If  un- 
dertakings like  these  have  been  accomplished  in  the  com- 
pass of  a  few  years  by  the  authority  of  single  members  of  our 
confederation,  can  we,  the  representative  authorities  of  the 
whole  Union,  fall  behind  our  fellow-servants  in  the  exercise 

39o 


THE  GREAT  WESTERN  MARCH 

of  the  trust  committed  to  us  for  the  benefit  of  our  common 
sovereign,  by  the  accomplishment  of  works  important  to  the 
whole,,  and  to  which  neither  the  authority  nor  the  resources 
of  any  one  State  can  be  adequate?" 

Nor  was  this  all.  It  is  curious  to  see  that  the  Presi- 
dent's faithful  ally,  Richard  Rush,  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  went  far  beyond  his  chief  in  the  tone  of 
his  recommendations,  and  drifted  into  what  would 
now  be  promptly  labelled  as  communism.  When 
we  read  as  an  extreme  proposition  in  these  days,  in 
the  middle  of  some  mildly  socialistic  manifesto,  the 
suggestion  that  there  should  be  a  national  bureau 
"whereby  new  fields  can  be  opened,  old  ones  develop- 
ed, and  every  labor  can  be  properly  directed  and 
located,"  we  fancy  it  a  novelty.  But  see  how  utter- 
ly Mr.  Rush  surpassed  these  moderate  proposals  in 
one  of  his  reports  as  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  He 
said  that  it  was  the  duty  of  government 

"to  augment  the  number  and  variety  of  occupations  for  its 
inhabitants;  to  hold  out  to  every  degree  of  labor  and  to 
every  manifestation  of  skill  its  appropriate  object  and  in- 
ducement ;  to  organize  the  whole  labor  of  a  country ;  to  en- 
tice into  the  widest  ranges  its  mechanical  and  intellectual 
capacities,  instead  of  suffering  them  to  slumber;  to  call 
forth,  wherever  hidden,  latent  ingenuity,  giving  to  effort 
activity  and  to  emulation  ardor;  to  create  employment  for 
the  greatest  amount  of  numbers  by  adapting  it  to  the  di- 
versified faculties,  propensities,  and  situations  of  men,  so 
that  every  particle  of  ability,  every  shade  of  genius,  may 
come  into  requisition." 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  actual  advances  made  under 
the  guidance  of  Mr.  Adams.  Nothing  in  the  history 
of  the  globe  is  so  extraordinary  in  its  topographical 
and  moral  results  as  the  vast  western  march  of  the 

391 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

American  people  within  a  hundred  years.  Let  us 
look,  for  instance,  at  some  contemporary  map  of 
what  constituted  the  northern  part  of  the  United 
States  in  1798.  The  western  boundary  of  visible 
settlement  is  the  Genesee  River  of  New  York.  The 
names  on  the  Hudson  are  like  the  names  of  to-day; 
all  beyond  is  strange.  No  railroad,  no  canal;  only  a 
turnpike  running  to  the  Genesee,  and  with  no  farther 
track  to  mark  the  way  through  the  forest  to  "  Buffa- 
loe,"  on  the  far-off  lake.  Along  this  turnpike  are 
settlements — "Schenectady,"  "Canajohary,"  "Schuy- 
ler, or  Utica,"  "Fort  Stenwick,  or  Rome,"  "Oneida 
Cassle,"  "Onondaga  Cassle,"  "Geneva,"  and  "Can- 
andargue,"  where  the  road  turns  north  to  Lake 
Ontario.  Forests  cover  all  western  New  York,  all 
northwestern  Pennsylvania.  Far  off  in  Ohio  is  a 
detached  region  indicated  as  "the  Connecticut  Re- 
serve, conceded  to  the  families  who  had  been  ruined 
during  the  war  of  independence" — whence  our  mod- 
ern phrase  "Western  Reserve."  The  summary  of  the 
whole  map  is  that  the  nation  still  consists  of  the 
region  east  of  the  Alleghanies,  with  a  few  outlying 
settlements,  and  nothing  more. 

Now  pass  over  twenty  years.  In  the  map  pre- 
fixed to  William  Darby's  Tour  from  New  York  to 
Detroit,  in  18 18— this  Darby  being  the  author  of  an 
emigrant's  guide  and  a  member  of  the  New  York 
Historical  Society — we  find  no  State  west  of  •  the 
Mississippi  except  Missouri,  and  scarcely  any  towns 
in  Indiana  or  Illinois.  Michigan  Territory  is  desig- 
nated, but  across  the  whole  western  half  of  it  is  the 
inscription,  "This  part  very  imperfectly  known." 
All  beyond  Lake  Michigan  and  all  west  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi is  a  nameless  waste,  except  for  a  few  names 

392 


THE  GREAT  WESTERN  MARCH 

of  rivers  and  of  Indian  villages.  This  marks  the 
progress  —  and  a  very  considerable  progress  —  of 
twenty  years.  Writing  from  Buffalo  (now  spelled 
correctly),  Darby  says,  "The  beautiful  and  highly 
cultivated  lands  of  the  strait  of  Erie  are  now  a  speci- 
men of  what  in  forty  years  will  be  the  landscape  from 
Erie  to  Chicaga  [sic].  It  is  a  very  gratifying  antici- 
pation to  behold  in  fancy  the  epoch  to  come  when 
this  augmenting  mass  of  the  population  will  enjoy, 
in  the  interior  of  this  vast  continent,  a  choice  col- 
lection of  immense  marts  where  the  produce  of  the 
banks  of  innumerable  rivers  and  lakes  can  be  ex- 
changed." 

Already,  it  seems,  travellers  and  map-makers  had 
got  from  misspelling  "Buff aloe"  to  misspelling  " Chi- 
caga." It  was  a  great  deal.  The  Edinburgh  Review 
for  that  same  year  (June,  1818),  in  reviewing  Birk- 
beck's  once  celebrated  Travels  in  America,  said: 

"Where  is  this  prodigious  increase  of  numbers,  this  vast 
extension  of  dominion,  to  end?  What  bounds  has  nature 
set  to  the  progress  of  this  mighty  nation?  Let  our  jealousy 
burn  as  it  may,  let  our  intolerance  of  America  be  as  unrea- 
sonably violent  as  we  please,  still  it  is  plain  that  she  is  a 
power  in  spite  of  us,  rapidly  rising  to  supremacy;  or,  at  least, 
that  each  year  so  mightily  augments  her  strength  as  to  over- 
take, by  a  most  sensible  distance,  even  the  most  formidable 
of  her  competitors." 

This  was  written,  it  must  be  remembered,  when 
the  whole  population  of  the  United  States  was  but 
little  more  than  nine  millions,  or  less  than  the  num- 
ber now  occupying  New  York  and  Massachusetts 
taken  together. 

What  were  the  first  channels  for  this  great  trans- 
fer of  population?  They  were  the  great  turnpike- 
26  393 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

road  up  the  Mohawk  Valley,  in  New  York ;  and,  farther 
south,  the  "National  Road,"  which  ended  at  Wheel- 
ing, Virginia.  Old  men,  now  or  recently  living— 
as,  for  instance,  Sewall  Newhouse,  the  trapper  and 
trap-maker  of  Oneida— can  recall  the  long  lines  of 
broad-wheeled  wagons,  drawn  by  ten  horses,  forty 
of  these  teams  sometimes  coming  in  close  succession ; 
the  stages,  six  of  which  were  sometimes  in  sight  at 
once;  the  casualties,  the  break-downs,  the  sloughs  of 
despond,  the  passengers  at  work  with  fence-rails  to 
pry  out  the  vehicle  from  a  mud-hole.  These  sights, 
now  vanishing  or  gone  upon  the  shores  of  the  Pacific, 
were  then  familiar  in  the  heart  of  what  is  now  the 
East.  This  was  the  tide  flowing  westward;  while 
eastward,  on  the  other  hand,  there  soon  began  a 
counter-current  of  flocks  and  herds  sent  from  the 
new  settlements  to  supply  the  older  States.  As 
early  as  1824  Timothy  Flint  records  meeting  a  drove 
of  more  than  a  thousand  cattle  and  swine,  rough  and 
shaggy  as  wolves,  guided  towards  the  Philadelphia 
market  by  a  herdsman  looking  as  untamed  as  them- 
selves, and  coming  from  Ohio — "a  name  which  still 
sounded  in  our  ears,"  Flint  says,  "like  the  land  of 
savages." 

The  group  so  well  known  in  our  literature,  the 
emigrant  family,  the  way-side  fire,  the  high-peaked 
wagon,  the  exhausted  oxen  —  this  picture  recedes 
steadily  in  space  as  we  come  nearer  to  our  own  time. 
In  1788  it  set  off  with  the  first  settlers  from  Massa- 
chusetts to  seek  Ohio;  in  1798  it  was  just  leaving 
the  Hudson  to  ascend  the  Mohawk  River;  in  181 5 
the  hero  of  Lawrie  Todd  saw  it  at  Rochester,  New 
York;  in  18 19  Darby  met  it  near  Detroit,  Michigan; 
in  1824  Flint  saw  it  in  Missouri;   in  1831  Alexander 

394 


THE  GREAT  WESTERN  MARCH 


depicted  it  in  Tennessee;  in  1843  Margaret  Fuller 
sketched  it  beyond  Chicago,  Illinois;  in  1856  I  my- 
self saw  it  in  Nebraska  and  Kansas;  in  1864  Clar- 
ence King  described  it  in  his  admirable  sketch,  ' '  Way- 
side Pikes,"  in  California;  in  1882  Mrs.  Leighton,  in 
her  graphic  letters,  pictures  it  at  Puget  Sound,  be- 
yond which,  as  it  has  reached  the  Pacific,  it  cannot 
advance.  From  this  continent  the  emigrant  group  in 
its  original  form  has  almost  vanished;  the  process  of 
spreading  emigration  by  steam  is  less  picturesque 
but  more  rapid. 

MOVEMENT  OF  CENTRE  OP  POPULATION  SINCE   1790. 

Approximate  Location  by  Important  Town 


Census 

North 

West 

Year 

Latitude 

Longitude 

1790 

39°  15'  5" 

760  11'  2" 

1800 

39°  16'  1" 

76°  56'  5" 

1810 

39°  II   5 

77°  37'  2" 

1820 

39°  5'  7 

78°  33'    0" 

1830 

38°  5  7'  9" 

79°  16  9'' 

1840 

39°  2   0 

8o°  18'  0" 

1850 

38°  59'  0" 

8i°  19'  0" 

1S60 

39°  0'  4" 

820  48'  8" 

1870 

390  12'  0" 

83°  35'  7" 

1880 

39°  4'  1" 

84°  39'  7" 

1890 

39°  11'  9" 

85°  32'  9 

1900 

390  9' 36" 

85°  48'  54" 

Twenty-three  miles  east  of  Baltimore,  Md. 
Eighteen  miles  west  of  Baltimore,  Md. 
Forty  miles  northwest  by  west  of  Washington,  D.  C 
Sixteen  miles  north  of  Woodstock,  Va. 
Nineteen  miles  west-southwest  of  Moorefield,  W.  Va. 
Sixteen  miles  south  of  Clarksburg,  W.  Va. 
Twenty-three  miles  southeast  of  Parkersburg.W.Va. 
Twenty  miles  south  of  Chillicothe,  O. 
Forty-eight  miles  east  by  north  of  Cincinnati,  O. 
Eight  miles  west  by  south  of  Cincinnati,  O. 
Twenty  miles  east  of  Columbus,  Ind. 
Six  miles  southwest  of  Columbus,  Ind. 


The  successive  volumes  of  the  United  States  census 
to  1900  give,  with  accuracy  and  fulness  of  detail, 
the  panorama  of  this  vast  westward  march.  It  is  a 
matter  of  national  pride  to  see  how  its  everchanging 
phases  have  been  caught  and  photographed  in  these 
masterly  volumes,  in  a  way  such  as  the  countries  of 
the  older  world  have  never  equalled,  though  it  would 
seem  so  much  easier  to  depict  their  more  fixed  con- 
ditions. The  Austrian  newspapers  complain  that  no 
one  in  that  nation  knows  at  this  moment,  for  instance, 
the  centre  of  Austrian  population;  while  the  succes- 
sive centres  for  the  United  States  are  here  exhibited 
on  a  chart  with  a  precision  as  great,  and  an  impres- 

395 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

siveness  to  the  imagination  as  vast,  as  when  astrono- 
mers represent  for  us  the  successive  positions  of  a 
planet.  Like  the  shadow  thrown  by  the  hand  of 
some  great  clock,  this  inevitable  point  advances  year 
by  year  across  the  continent,  sometimes  four  miles 
a  year,  sometimes  eight  miles,  but  always  advancing. 
And  with  this  striking  summary  the  census  report 
gives  us  a  series  of  successive  representations  on 
colored  charts,  at  ten-year  intervals,  of  the  gradual 
expansion  and  filling  in  of  population  over  the 
whole  territory  of  the  United  States.  No  romance 
is  so  fascinating  as  the  thoughts  suggested  by  these 
silent  sheets,  each  line  and  tint  representing  the  un- 
spoken sacrifices  and  fatigues  of  thousands  of  name- 
less men  and  women.  Let  us  consider  for  a  moment 
these  successive  indications. 

In  the  census  table  for  1 790  the  whole  population  is 
on  the  eastern  slope  of  the  Appalachian  range,  except 
a  slight  spur  of  emigration  reaching  westward  from 
Pennsylvania  and  Virginia  and  a  detached  settle- 
ment in  Kentucky.  The  average  depth  of  the  strip 
of  civilization,  measuring  back  from  the  Atlantic 
westward,  is  but  three  hundred  and  fifty-five  miles. 
In  1800  there  is  some  increase  of  population  within 
the  old  lines  and  a  western  movement  along  the 
Mohawk  in  New  York  State,  while  the  Kentucky 
group  of  inhabitants  has  spread  down  into  Tennessee. 
In  1 810  all  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  and  Kentucky 
are  well  sprinkled  with  population,  which  begins  to 
invade  southern  Ohio  also,  while  the  territory  of 
Orleans  has  a  share;  although  Michigan,  Indiana, 
Illinois,  Missouri,  the  Mississippi  territory — includ- 
ing Mississippi  and  Alabama — are  still  almost  or 
quite  untouched.     In  1820  Ohio,  or  two-thirds  of  it, 

396 


THE  GREAT  WESTERN  MARCH 

shows  signs  of  civilized  occupation;  and  the  settle- 
ments around  Detroit,  which  so  impressed  Darby, 
have  joined  those  in  Ohio;  Tennessee  is  well  occu- 
pied, as  is  southern  Indiana ;  while  Illinois,  Wisconsin, 
Alabama,  have  little  rills  of  population  adjoining  the 
Indian  tribes,  which  are  not  yet  removed,  and  still  re- 
tard southern  settlements.  In  1830  — Adams's  ad- 
ministration being  now  closed— Indiana  is  nearly  cov- 
ered with  population,  Illinois  more  than  half;  there 
is  hardly  any  unsettled  land  in  Ohio,  while  Michigan 
is  beginning  to  be  occupied.  Population  has  spread 
up  the  Missouri  to  the  north  of  Kansas  River ;  and 
farther  south,  Louisiana,  Alabama,  and  Arkansas  be- 
gin to  show  for  something.  But  even  in  1830  the 
centre  of  population  is  in  Moorefield,  West  Virginia, 
and  is  not  yet  moving  westward  at  the  rate  of  more 
than  five  miles  a  year. 

This  year  of  1830  lying  beyond  the  term  of  John 
Quincy  Adams's  administration,  I  shall  here  follow 
the  statistics  of  the  great  migration  no  farther.  Turn 
now  to  his  annual  messages,  and  see  how,  instead  of 
the  doubts  or  cautious  hints  of  his  predecessors,  these 
State  papers  are  filled  with  suggestions  of  those  spe- 
cial improvements  which  an  overflowing  Treasury 
enabled  him  to  secure.  In  his  third  annual  message, 
for  instance,  he  alludes  to  reports  ready  for  Congress, 
and  in  some  cases  acted  upon,  in  respect  to  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  national  road  from  Cumberland  east- 
ward and  to  Columbus  and  St.  Louis  westward; 
other  reports  as  to  a  national  road  from  Washington 
to  Buffalo,  and  a  post-road  from  Baltimore  to  Phila- 
delphia; as  to  a  canal  from  Lake  Pontchartrain  to 
the  Mississippi ;  as  to  another  to  be  cut  across  Florida ; 
another  to  connect  Mobile  and  Pensacola ;  another  to 

397 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

unite  the  Coosa  and  Hiawassee  rivers  in  Alabama. 
There  are  reports  also  on  Cape  Fear ;  on  the  Swash  in 
Pamlico  Sound;  on  La  Plaisance  Bay  in  Michigan; 
on  the  Kennebec  and  Saugatuck  rivers;  on  the  har- 
bors of  Edgartown,  Hyannis,  and  Newburyport.  What 
has  been  already  done,  he  says,  in  these  and  similar 
directions,  has  cost  three  or  four  millions  of  dollars 
annually,  but  it  has  been  done  without  creating  a 
dollar  of  taxes  or  debt;  nor  has  it  diminished  the 
payment  of  previous  debts,  which  have  indeed  been 
reduced  to  the  extent  of  sixteen  millions  of  dollars  in 
three  years.  But  this  was  only  a  partial  estimate. 
During  the  whole  administration  of  John  Quincy 
Adams,  according  to  the  American  Annual  Register, 
more  than  a  million  of  dollars  were  devoted  to  the 
light-house  system ;  half  a  million  to  public  buildings ; 
two  millions  to  arsenals  and  armories;  three  millions 
to  coast  fortifications;  three  millions  to  the  navy; 
and  four  millions  to  internal  improvements  and  scien- 
tific surveys.  Including  smaller  items,  nearly  four- 
teen millions  were  expended  under  him  for  perma- 
nent objects,  besides  five  millions  of  dollars  for  pen- 
sions ;  a  million  and  a  half  for  the  Indian  tribes ;  thirty 
millions  for  the  reduction  of  the  public  debt;  and  a 
surplus  of  five  millions  for  his  successor.  Here  was 
patriotic  housekeeping  indeed  for  the  vast  family  of 
the  nation,  and  yet  this  administration  has  very  com- 
monly been  passed  over  as  belonging  to  those  times 
of  peace  that  have  proverbially  but  few  historians. 

Let  us  return  to  the  actual  progress  of  the  great 
western  march.  The  Ohio  River  being  once  reached, 
the  main  channel  of  emigration  lay  in  the  watercourses. 
Steam-boats  as  yet  were  but  beginning  their  invasion, 
amid  the  general  dismay  and  cursing  of  the  popu- 

398 


THE  GREAT  WESTERN  MARCH 

lation  of  boatmen  that  had  rapidly  established  itself 
along  the  shore  of  every  river.  The  early  water  life 
of  the  Ohio  and  its  kindred  streams  was  the  very 
romance  of  emigration;  no  monotonous  agriculture, 
no  toilsome  wood-chopping,  could  keep  back  the  ad- 
venturous boys  who  found  delight  in  the  endless 
novelty,  the  alternate  energy  and  repose  of  a  float- 
ing existence  on  those  delightful  waters.  The  va- 
riety of  river  craft  corresponded  to  the  varied  tastes 
and  habits  of  the  boatmen.  There  was  the  great 
barge  with  lofty  deck,  requiring  twenty-five  men  to 
work  it  up-stream;  there  was  the  long  keel-boat, 
carrying  from  fifteen  to  thirty  tons;  there  was  the 
Kentucky  "broad-horn,"  compared  by  the  emigrants 
of  that  day  to  a  New  England  pigsty  set  afloat,  and 
sometimes  built  one  hundred  feet  long  and  carrying 
seventy  tons;  there  was  the  "family  boat,"  of  like 
structure,  and  bearing  a  whole  household,  with  cattle, 
hogs,  horses,  and  sheep.  Other  boats  were  floating 
tin  shops,  blacksmiths'  shops,  whiskey  shops,  dry- 
goods  shops.  A  few  were  propelled  by  horse-power. 
Of  smaller  vessels  there  were  "covered  sleds,"  "ferry 
flats,"  and  "Alleghany  skiffs";  "pirogues"  made 
from  two  tree  trunks,  or  "dug-outs"  consisting  of 
one.  These  boats  would  set  out  from  Pittsburg  for 
voyages  of  all  lengths,  sometimes  extending  over 
three  thousand  miles,  and  reaching  points  on  the 
Missouri,  Arkansas,  and  Red  rivers.  Boats  came  to 
St.  Louis  from  Montreal  with  but  few  "portages"  or 
"carries"  on  the  way;  and  sometimes  arrived  from 
Mackinaw,  when  the  streams  were  high  and  the 
morasses  full,  without  being  carried  by  hand  at  all. 

The  crews  were  carefully  chosen;  a  "  Kentuck,"  or 
Kentuckian,  was  considered  the  best  man  at  a  pole, 

399 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

and  a  "Kanuck,"  or  French  Canadian,  at  the  oar  or 
the  "cordelle,"  the  rope  used  to  haul  a  boat  up- 
stream. Their  talk  was  of  the  dangers  of  the  river; 
of  "planters  and  sawyers,"  meaning  tree  trunks  em- 
bedded more  or  less  firmly  in  the  river;  of  "riffles," 
meaning  ripples;  and  of  "shoots/'  or  rapids  (French, 
chutes) .  It  was  as  necessary  to  have  violins  on  board 
as  to  have  whiskey,  and  all  the  traditions  in  song  or 
picture  of  "the  jolly  boatmen"  date  back  to  that 
by-gone  day.  Between  the  two  sides  of  the  river 
there  was  already  a  jealousy.  Ohio  was  called  "the 
Yankee  State' ' ;  and  Flint  tells  us  that  it  was  a  stand- 
ing joke  among  the  Ohio  boatmen,  when  asked  their 
cargo,  to  reply,  "Pit-coal  indigo,  wooden  nutmegs, 
straw  baskets,  and  Yankee  notions."  The  same  au- 
thority describes  this  sort  of  questioning  as  being 
inexhaustible  among  the  river  people,  and  asserts 
that  from  one  descending  boat  came  this  series  of 
answers,  all  of  which  proved  to  be  truthful:  "Where 
are  you  from?"  "Redstone."  "What's  your  land- 
ing?" "  Millstones."  "What's  your  captain's  name  ?" 
"Whetstone."  "Where  are  you  bound?"  "To 
Limestone." 

All  this  panorama  of  moving  life  was  brought  near- 
ly to  a  close,  during  the  younger  Adams's  administra- 
tion, by  the  introduction  of  steam-boats,  though  it 
was  prolonged  for  a  time  upon  the  newly  built  canals. 
Steam-boats  were  looked  upon,  as  Flint  tells  us,  with 
"detestation"  by  the  inhabitants,  though  they  soon 
learned  to  depend  upon  them  and  to  make  social 
visits  in  them  to  friends  a  hundred  miles  away.  In 
1812  Fulton's  first  western  boat,  the  Orleans,  went 
down  the  Ohio,  and  in  181 6  the  Washington  proved  it- 
self able  to  stem  the  current  in  returning.     But  for 

400 


THE  GREAT  WESTERN  MARCH 

a  time  canals  spread  more  rapidly  than  steam-boats. 
Gouverneur  Morris  had  first  suggested  the  Erie  Canal 
in  1777,  and  Washington  had  indeed  proposed  a 
system  of  such  waterways  in  1774.  But  the  first 
actual  work  of  this  kind  in  the  United  States  was  that 
dug  around  Turner's  Falls,  in  Massachusetts,  soon 
after  1792.  In  1803  De  Witt  Clinton  again  proposed 
the  Erie  Canal.  It  was  begun  in  181 7,  and  opened 
July  4,  1825,  being  cut  mainly  through  a  wilderness. 
The  effect  produced  on  public  opinion  was  absolutely 
startling.  When  men  found  that  the  time  from  Al- 
bany to  Buffalo  was  reduced  one-half,  and  that  the 
freight  on  a  ton  of  merchandise  was  cut  down  from 
$100  to  $10,  and  ultimately  to  $3,  similar  enterprises 
sprang  into  being  everywhere.  The  most  conspicu- 
ous of  these  was  the  Chesapeake  and  Ohio  Canal,  from 
Georgetown  to  Pittsburg,  which  was  surveyed  and 
planned  by  the  national  board  of  internal  improve- 
ments, created  just  before  Mr.  Adams's  accession. 
On  July  4,  1828,  the  first  blow  in  the  excavation  was 
struck  by  the  President.  He  had  a  habit  of  declin- 
ing invitations  to  agricultural  fairs  and  all  public  ex- 
hibitions, but  was  persuaded  to  make  a  speech  and 
put  the  first  spade  in  the  ground  for  this  great  enter- 
prise. The  soil  was  for  some  reason  so  hard  that  it 
would  scarcely  give  way,  so  the  President  took  off  his 
coat,  and  tried  again  and  again,  at  last  raising  the 
sod,  amid  general  applause.  It  was  almost  the  only 
time  during  his  arduous  life  when  he  paused  to  do  a 
picturesque  or  symbolic  act  before  the  people. 

Thus,  by  various  means,  the  great  wave  swept 
westward.  Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  and  New  Jer- 
sey filled  up  Ohio ;  North  Carolina  and  Virginia  pop- 
ulated  Kentucky  and   Tennessee;   Canada   sent   its 

401 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

emigrants  into  Illinois  and  Indiana  and  all  down  the 
Mississippi.  The  new  settlers,  being  once  launched 
in  the  free  career  of  the  West,  developed  by  degrees 
a  new  type  of  character.  Everywhere  there  was  a 
love  of  the  frontier  life,  of  distance,  and  of  isolation, 
of  "range,"  as  the  Kentuckians  of  that  day  called  it. 
There  was  a  charming  side  to  it  all.  There  was  no 
more  fascinating  existence  anywhere  than  that  of  the 
pioneer  hunters  in  the  yet  unfelled  forests,  and  the 
lasting  popularity  of  Cooper's  novels  proves  the  per- 
manent spell  exercised  by  this  life  over  the  imagina- 
tion. No  time  will  ever  diminish  the  picturesque- 
ness  of  Daniel  Boone's  career  in  Kentucky,  for  in- 
stance, amid  the  exquisite  beauty  of  the  regions  near 
Lexington — woods  carpeted  with  turf  like  an  English 
park,  free  from  underbrush,  with  stately  trees  of 
every  variety,  and  fresh,  clear  streams  everywhere; 
or  beside  the  salt  springs  of  the  Licking  Valley,  where 
Simon  Kenton  saw  from  twenty  to  thirty  thousand 
buffaloes  congregated  at  a  time.  What  were  the 
tame  adventures  of  Robin  Hood  to  the  occasion  when 
these  two  pioneer  hunters,  Boone  and  Kenton,  ap- 
proached the  Licking  Valley,  each  alone,  from  op- 
posite points,  each  pausing  to  reconnoitre  before 
leaving  the  shelter  of  the  woods,  and  each  recogniz- 
ing the  presence  of  another  human  being  in  the  val- 
ley ?  Then  began  a  long  series  of  manoeuvres  on  the 
part  of  each  to  discover  who  the  other  was,  without 
self -betrayal ;  and  such  was  their  skill  that  it  took 
forty-eight  hours  before  either  could  make  up  his 
mind  that  the  other  was  a  white  man  and  a  friend, 
not  an  Indian  and  a  foe. 

But  there  was  to  all  this  picture  a  reverse  side  that 
was  less  charming.     For  those  who  were  not  content 

402 


THE  GREAT  WESTERN  MARCH 

to  spend  their  lives  as  woodsmen  in  Kentucky,  and 
preferred  to  seek  Ohio  as  agriculturists,  how  much  of 
sacrifice  there  was ! — what  weary  years  of  cold,  pov- 
erty, discomfort!  This  letter,  quoted  in  Perkins's 
Fifty  Years  of  Ohio,  as  written  in  1818  from  Marietta, 
gives  a  glimpse  through  the  doorway  of  a  thousand 
cabins : 

"Marietta  I  find  a  poor,  muddy  hole;  the  mud  here  is 
more  disagreeable  than  snow  in  Massachusetts.  My  advice 
to  all  my  friends  is  not  to  come  to  this  country.  There  is 
not  one  in  a  hundred  but  what  is  discontented;  but  they 
cannot  get  back,  having  spent  all  their  property  in  getting 
here.  It  is  the  most  broken  country  that  I  ever  saw.  Poor, 
lean  pork  at  twelve  cents;  salt,  four  cents;  poor,  dry  fish, 
twenty  cents.  The  corn  is  miserable,  and  we  cannot  get  it 
ground;  we  have  to  pound  it.  Those  that  have  lanterns 
grate  it.  Rum,  twenty-five  cents  a  gill;  sugar,  thirty-seven 
cents  a  pound;  and  no  molasses!  This  country  has  been 
the  ruin  of  a  great  many  poor  people ;  it  has  undone  a  great 
many  poor  souls  forever." 

Meantime,  at  Washington,  there  had  been  a  great 
increase  in  wealth  and  social  refinement  since  the 
earlier  days.  Josiah  Quincy,  in  his  Recollections  of 
Washington  Society  in  1826,  presents  for  us  a  pol- 
ished and  delightful  community,  compared  to  that 
which  had  preceded  it.  Himself  a  handsome  young 
Bostonian,  with  the  prestige  of  a  name  already  noted, 
he  found  nothing  but  sunshine  and  roses  in  his  path 
through  the  metropolis.  Names  now  historic  glitter 
through  his  pages;  he  went  to  balls  under  the  escort 
of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Daniel  Webster;  his  first  entertain- 
ment was  at  Mrs.  William  Wirt's,  where  he  met  Miss 
Henry,  Patrick  Henry's  daughter,  who  played  the 
piano  and  sang  to  the  harp.     The  belles  of  the  day 

403 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

smiled  upon  him;  Miss  Catherine  van  Rensselaer,  of 
Albany,  and  Miss  Cora  Livingston,  the  same  who  in 
her  old  age,  as  Mrs.  Barton,  sold  the  great  Shake- 
spearian library  to  the  city  of  Boston.  The  most  con- 
spicuous married  belle  of  that  day  was  known  as 
Mrs.  Florida  White,  so  called  because  her  husband 
represented  that  region,  then  new  and  strange.  More 
eccentric  than  this  sobriquet  were  the  genuine  names 
in  the  household  of  Mrs.  Peter,  granddaughter  of  Mrs. 
Washington  and  the  fiercest  of  Federalists,  who  had 
christened  her  daughters  America,  Columbia,  and 
Britannia — the  last  by  way  of  defiance,  it  was  said, 
to  Jefferson.  With  these  various  charmers  Quincy 
attended  many  a  ball  in  Washington,  these  enter- 
tainments then  keeping  modest  hours — from  eight  to 
eleven.  He  saw  a  sight  not  then  considered  so  mod- 
est— the  introduction,  in  1826,  of  the  first  waltz, 
danced  with  enthusiasm  by  Baron  Stackelburg,  who 
whirled  through  it  without  removing  his  huge  dra- 
goon spurs,  and  was  applauded  at  the  end  for  the 
skill  with  which  he  avoided  collisions  that  might 
have  been  rather  murderous. 

The  young  Bostonian  also  went  to  dinner-parties; 
sometimes  at  the  White  House,  either  formal  state 
dinners  of  forty  gentlemen  and  ladies,  or  private  oc- 
casions, less  elaborate,  where  he  alone  among  wit- 
nesses found  the  President  "amusing."  He  gives 
also  an  agreeable  picture  of  the  home  and  household 
manners  of  Daniel  Webster,  not  yet  fallen  into  those 
questionable  private  habits  which  the  French  M. 
Bacourt,  sixteen  years  afterwards,  too  faithfully 
chronicled.  Quincy  also  found  the  Vice  -  president, 
John  C.  Calhoun,  a  man  most  agreeable  in  his  own 
house,   while  Miss  Calhoun  had  an   admirable   gift 

404 


THE  GREAT  WESTERN  MARCH 

for  political  discussion.  The  presence  of  these  emi- 
nent men  lent  a  charm  even  to  the  muddy  streets 
and  scattered  houses  of  the  Washington  of  that  day. 
The  two  branches  of  government  then  met  in  small, 
ill-arranged  halls,  the  House  of  Representatives  hav- 
ing huge  pillars  to  intercept  sight  and  sound,  with 
no  gallery  for  visitors,  but  only  a  platform  but  lit- 
tle higher  than  the  floor.  In  this  body  the  great 
Federal  party  had  left  scarcely  a  remnant  of  itself, 
Elisha  Potter,  of  Rhode  Island,  describing  vividly  to 
Quincy  a  caucus  held  when  the  faithful  few  had  been 
reduced  to  eleven,  and  could  only  cheer  themselves 
with  the  thought  that  the  Christian  apostles,  after 
the  desertion  of  Judas,  could  number  no  more.  The 
Houses  of  Congress  were  still  rather  an  arena  of  de- 
bating than  for  set  speeches,  as  now ;  and  they  had  their 
leaders,  mostly  now  fallen  into  that  oblivion  which 
waits  so  surely  on  merely  political  fame.  Daniel 
Webster,  to  be  sure,  was  the  great  ornament  of  the 
Senate ;  but  McDuffie,  of  South  Carolina,  and  Storrs, 
of  New  York,  members  of  the  House,  had  then  a 
national  reputation  for  eloquence,  though  they  now 
are  but  the  shadows  of  names.  To  these  must  be 
added  Archer,  of  Virginia,  too  generally  designated 
as  "Insatiate  Archer,"  from  his  fatal  long-winded- 
ness. 

For  the  first  time  in  many  years  the  White  House 
was  kept  in  decent  order  again;  all  about  it  had  for 
years — if  we  may  trust  Samuel  Breck's  testimony- 
worn  the  slipshod,  careless  look  of  a  Virginia  plan- 
tation. Fence-posts  fell  and  lay  broken  on  the 
ground  for  months,  although  they  could  have  been 
repaired  in  half  an  hour;  and  the  grass  of  the  lawns, 
cut  at  long  intervals,  was  piled  in  large  stacks  before 

405 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  drawing-room  windows.  Fifty  thousand  dollars 
spent  on  the  interior  in  Monroe's  time  had  produced 
only  a  slovenly  splendor,  while  the  fourteen  thou- 
sand appropriated  to  Adams  produced  neatness,  at 
least.  'Manners  shared  some  of  the  improvement,  in 
respect  to  order  and  decorum  at  least,  though  some- 
thing of  the  profuse  Virginia  cordiality  may  have  been 
absent.  It  was  an  intermediate  period,  when,  far 
more  than  now,  the  European  forms  were  being  tried, 
and  sometimes  found  wanting.  In  Philadelphia, 
where  the  social  ambition  was  highest,  William 
Bingham  had  entertainments  that  were  held  to  be 
the  most  showy  in  America.  He  had,  as  in  England, 
a  row  of  liveried  servants,  who  repeated  in  loud  tone, 
from  one  to  another,  the  name  of  every  guest.  A 
slight  circumstance  put  an  end  to  the  practice.  On 
the  evening  of  a  ball  an  eminent  physician,  Dr.  Kuhn, 
drove  to  the  door  with  his  step-daughter,  and  was 
asked  his  name  by  the  lackey.  "The  doctor  and 
Miss  Peggy,"  was  the  reply.  "The  doctor  and  Miss 
Peggy"  was  echoed  by  the  man  at  the  door,  and 
hence  by  successive  stages  to  the  drawing-room.  The 
doctor  and  Miss  Peggy  (Miss  Markoe,  afterwards  Mrs. 
Benjamin  Franklin  Bache)  became  the  joke  of  the 
town;  and  the  practice  was  soon  after  changed,  car- 
rying with  it  the  humbler  attempts  at  imitation  in 
Washington.  Samuel  Breck,  who  tells  the  story, 
rejoices  that  among  the  other  failures  in  aping  for- 
eign manners  were  ' '  the  repeated  attempts  of  our 
young  dandies  to  introduce  the  mustache  on  the 
upper  lip."  "  And  so,"  he  adds,  "with  the  broadcloth 
gaiters  and  other  foreign  costumes.  They  were  neither 
useful  nor  ornamental,  and  would  not  take  with  us. 
So  much  the  better." 

406 


THE  GREAT  WESTERN  MARCH 

The  President  himself,  in  the  midst  of  all  this, 
lived  a  life  so  simple  that  the  word  Spartan  hardly 
describes  it.  He  was  now  sixty  years  old.  Rising 
at  four  or  five,  even  in  winter,  he  often  built  his  own 
fire,  and  then  worked  upon  his  correspondence  and 
his  journal,  while  the  main  part  of  the  day  was  given 
to  public  affairs,  these  being  reluctantly  interrupted 
to  receive  a  stream. of  visitors.  In  the  evening  he 
worked  again,  sometimes  going  to  bed  at  eight  or 
nine  even  in  summer.  His  recreations  were  few- 
bathing  in  the  Potomac  before  sunrise,  and  taking  a 
walk  at  the  same  hour,  or  a  ride  later  in  the  day,  or 
sometimes  the  theatre,  such  as  it  was.  For  social 
life  he  had  little  aptitude,  though  he  went  through 
the  forms  of  it.  This  is  well  illustrated  by  one  singu- 
lar memorandum  in  his  diary:  "I  went  out  this 
evening  in  search  of  conversation,  an  art  of  which  I 
never  had  an  adequate  idea.  ...  I  never  knew  how  to 
make,  control,  or  change  it.  I  am  by  nature  a  silent 
animal,  and  my  dear  mother's  constant  lesson  in 
childhood  that  little  children  should  be  seen  and  not 
heard  confirmed  me   in  what   I   now   think   a  bad 

habit." 

It  is  to  be  observed  that  the  influence  of  political 
wire-pulling  first  began  to  be  seriously  felt  at  this 
period.  We  commonly  attribute  its  origin  to  Jack- 
son, but  it  really  began,  as  was  explained  in  a  pre- 
vious chapter,  with  Crawford.  As  the  end  of  Mon- 
roe's administration  drew  near,  there  were,  it  must 
be  remembered,  five  candidates  in  the  field  for  the 
succession— Crawford,  Clay,  Calhoun,  Adams,  and 
Jackson.  Calhoun  withdrew,  was  nominated  for 
Vice-president,  and  was  triumphantly  elected;  but 
for  President  there  was  no  choice.     Jackson  had  99 

407 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

electoral  votes,  Adams  84,  Crawford  41,  Clay  37. 
The  choice  was  thrown  into  the  House  of  Represent- 
atives, and  took  place  February  9,  1825.  Two  dis- 
tinguished men  were  tellers,  Daniel  Webster  and  John 
Randolph.  They  reported  that  Adams  had  13  votes, 
General  Jackson  7,  Crawford  4;  and  that  Adams  was 
therefore  elected.  The  explanation  was  that  Clay's 
forces  had  been  transferred  to  Adams,  and  when,  after 
his  inauguration,  Clay  was  made  Secretary  of  State, 
the  cry  of  "  unholy  coalition"  was  overwhelming.  It 
was,  John  Randolph  said,  "  a  combination  hitherto  un- 
heard of,  of  the  Puritan  and  the  Blackleg — of  Blifil 
and  Black  George" — these  being  two  characters  in 
Fielding's  Tom  Jones.  This  led  to  a  duel  between 
Clay  and  Randolph,  in  which  neither  party  fell.  But 
the  charge  remained.  Jackson  and  Calhoun  believed 
it  during  their  whole  lives,  though  the  publication  of 
John  Quincy  Adams's  Diary  has  made  it  clear  that 
there  was  no  real  foundation  for  it. 

The  influence,  since  called  "the  machine,"  in  poli- 
tics was  systematically  brought  to  bear  against 
Adams  during  all  the  latter  part  of  his  administra- 
tion. Having  the  reluctance  of  a  high-minded  states- 
man to  win  support  by  using  patronage  for  it,  he  un- 
luckily had  not  that  better  quality  which  enables  a 
warm-hearted  man  to  secure  loyal  aid  without  rais- 
ing a  finger.  The  power  that  he  thus  refused  to  em- 
ploy was  simply  used  against  him  by  his  own  sub- 
ordinates. We  know  by  the  unerring  evidence  of 
his  own  diary  that  he  saw  clearly  how  his  own  recti- 
tude was  injuring  him,  yet  never  thought  of  swerv- 
ing from  his  course.  One  by  one  the  men  depend- 
ent on  him  went  over,  beneath  his  eyes,  to  the  camp 
of  his  rival;  and  yet  so  long  as  each  man  was  a 

408 


THE  GREAT  WESTERN  MARCH 

good  officer  he  was  left  untouched.  Adams  says  in 
his  Diary  (under  date  of  May  13,  1825),  when  de- 
scribing his  own  entrance  on  office:  "Of  the  custom- 
house officers  throughout  the  Union  two-thirds  were 
probably  opposed  to  my  election.  They  were  all  now 
in  my  power,  and  I  had  been  urged  very  earnestly 
from  various  quarters  to  sweep  away  my  opponents, 
and  provide  with  their  places  for  my  friends."  This 
was  what  he  absolutely  refused  to  do.  In  these  days 
of  civil-service  reform  we  go  back  with  pleasure  to  his 
example;  but  the  general  verdict  of  the  period  was 
that  this  course  may  have  been  very  heroic,  but  it 
was  not  war. 

It  must  always  be  remembered,  moreover,  in  our 
effort  to  understand  the  excitement  of  politics  two  gen- 
erations ago,  that  the  Presidential  candidates  were 
then  nominated  by  Congressional  caucus.  The  effect 
was  to  concentrate  in  one  spot  the  excitement  and 
the  intrigues  that  must  now  be  distributed  through 
the  nation.  The  result  was  almost  wholly  evil.  "  It 
places  the  President,"  John  Quincy  Adams  wrote  just 
before  his  election,  "in  a  state  of  subserviency  to  the 
members  of  the  legislature,  which  .  .  .  leads  to  a 
thousand  corrupt  cabals  between  the  members  of 
Congress  and  heads  of  departments.  .  .  .  The  only 
possible  chance  for  a  head  of  a  department  to  attain 
the  Presidency  is  by  ingratiating  himself  with  the 
members  of  Congress."  The  result  was  that  these 
Congressmen  practically  selected  the  President.  For 
political  purposes,  Washington  was  the  focus  of  all 
that  political  agitation  now  distributed  over  various 
cities;  it  was  New  York,  Cincinnati,  Chicago,  all  in 
one.  It  was  in  a  centre  of  politics  like  this,  not  in 
the  present  more  metropolitan  Washington,  that  John 
27  4°9 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Quincy  Adams  stood  impassive — the  object  of  malice, 
of  jealousy,  of  envy,  of  respect,  and  perhaps  some- 
times even  of  love. 

He  was  that  most  unfortunate  personage,  an  ac- 
cidental President — one  chosen  not  by  a  majority  or 
even  a  plurality  of  popular  or  electoral  votes,  but 
only  by  the  process  reluctantly  employed  in  case 
these  votes  yield  no  choice.  The  popular  feeling  of 
the  nation,  by  a  plurality  at  least,  had  demanded  the 
military  favorite,  Jackson;  and  through  the  four 
years  of  Adams's  respectable  but  rather  colorless  ad- 
ministration it  still  persisted  in  this  demand.  The 
grave,  undemonstrative  President,  not  rewarding  his 
friends,  if  indeed  he  had  friends,  had  little  chance 
against  the  popular  favorite ;  his  faults  hindered  him ; 
his  very  virtues  hindered  him;  and  though  he  was 
not,  like  his  father,  defeated  squarely  on  a  clear  po- 
litical issue,  he  was  defeated  still.  With  him  we 
leave  behind  the  trained  statesmen-Presidents  of  the 
early  period,  and  pass  to  the  untrained,  untamed, 
vigorous  personality  of  Andrew  Jackson. 


XVIII 
"OLD    HICKORY" 

DR.  VON  HOLST,  one  of  the  most  philosophic  of 
historians,  when  he  passes  from  the  period  of  John 
Quincy  Adams  to  that  of  his  successor,  is  reluctantly 
compelled  to  leave  the  realm  of  pure  history  for  that 
of  biography,  and  to  entitle  a  chapter  ' '  The  Reign  of 
Andrew  Jackson."  This  change  of  treatment  could, 
indeed,  hardly  be  helped.  Under  Adams  all  was  im- 
personal, methodical,  a  government  of  laws  and  not 
of  men.  With  an  individuality  quite  as  strong  as 
that  of  Jackson — as  the  whole  nation  learned  ere  his 
life  ended — it  had  yet  been  the  training  of  his  earlier 
career  to  suppress  himself  and  be  simply  a  perfect 
official.  His  policy  aided  the  vast  progress  of  the 
nation,  but  won  for  him  no  credit  by  the  process. 
Men  saw  with  wonder  the  westward  march  of  an  ex- 
panding people,  but  forgot  to  notice  the  sedate,  pas- 
sionless, orderly  administration  that  held  the  door 
open  and  kept  the  peace  for  all.  In  studying  the  time 
of  Adams,  we  think  of  the  nation;  in  observing  that 
of  Jackson,  we  think  of  Jackson  himself.  In  him 
we  see  the  first  popular  favorite  of  a  people  now  well 
out  of  leading-strings,  and  particularly  bent  on  going 
alone.  By  so  much  as  he  differed  from  Adams,  by 
so  much  the  nation  liked  him  better.  His  conquests 
had  been  those  of  war — always  more  dazzling  than 

411 


HISTORY    OF    THE     UNITED    STATES 

those  of  peace;  his  temperament  was  of  fire — always 
more  attractive  than  one  of  marble.  He  was  helped 
by  what  he  had  done  and  by  what  he  had  not  done. 
Even  his  absence  of  diplomatic  training  was  almost 
counted  for  a  virtue,  because  all  this  training  was  then 
necessarily  European,  and  the  demand  had  arisen  for 
a  purely  American  product. 

It  had  been  quite  essential  to  the  self-respect  of 
the  new  republic,  at  the  outset,  that  it  should  have 
at  its  head  men  who  had  as  diplomatists  coped  with 
European  statesmen  and  not  been  discomfited.  This 
was  the  case  with  each  of  the  early  successors  of 
Washington,  and  in  view  of  Washington's  manifest 
superiority  this  advantage  had  not  been  needed.  Per- 
haps it  was  in  a  different  way  a  sign  of  self-respect 
that  the  new  republic  should  at  last  turn  from  this 
tradition  and  take  boldly  from  the  ranks  a  strong 
and  ill-trained  leader,  to  whom  all  European  prece- 
dent— and,  indeed,  all  other  precedent — counted  for 
nothing.  In  Jackson,  moreover,  there  first  appeared 
upon  our  national  stage  the  since  familiar  figure  of 
the  self-made  man.  Other  Presidents  had  sprung 
from  a  modest  origin,  but  nobody  had  made  an  es- 
pecial point  of  it.  Nobody  had  urged  Washington  for 
office  because  he  had  been  a  surveyor's  assistant;  no- 
body had  voted  for  Adams  merely  because  stately 
old  ladies  designated  him  as  "that  cobbler's  son." 
But  when  Jackson  came  into  office  the  people  had 
just  had  almost  a  surfeit  of  regular  training  in  their 
Chief  Magistrates.  There  was  a  certain  zest  in  the 
thought  of  a  change,  and  the  nation  had  it. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  Jackson  was  in  many 
ways  far  above  the  successive  modern  imitators  who 
have  posed  in  his  image.     He  was  narrow,  ignorant, 

412 


"OLD    HICKORY" 

violent,  unreasonable ;  he  punished  his  enemies  and  re- 
warded his  friends.  But  he  was,  on  the  other  hand 
— and  his  worst  opponents  hardly  denied  it — honest, 
truthful,  and  sincere.  It  was  not  commonly  charged 
upon  him  that  he  enriched  himself  at  the  public  ex- 
pense, or  that  he  deliberately  invented  falsehoods. 
And  as  he  was  for  a  time  more  bitterly  hated  than 
any  one  who  ever  occupied  his  high  office,  we  may  be 
very  sure  that  these  things  would  have  been  charged 
on  him,  had  it  been  possible.  In  this  respect  the 
contrast  was  enormous  between  Jackson  and  his  imi- 
tators, and  it  explains  his  prolonged  influence.  He 
never  was  found  out  or  exposed  before  the  world, 
because  there  was  nothing  to  detect  or  unveil;  his 
merits  and  demerits  were  as  visible  as  his  long,  nar- 
row, firmly  set  features,  or  as  the  old  military  stock 
that  encircled  his  neck.  There  he  was,  always  fully 
revealed ;  everybody  could  see  him ;  the  people  might 
take  him  or  leave  him — and  they  never  left  him. 

Moreover,  there  was,  after  the  eight  years  of  Mon- 
roe and  the  four  years  of  Adams,  an  immense  popu- 
lar demand  for  something  piquant  and  even  amus- 
ing, and  this  quality  men  always  found  in  Jackson. 
There  was  nothing  in  the  least  melodramatic  about 
him;  he  never  posed  or  attitudinized — it  would  have 
required  too  much  patience;  but  he  was  always  pi- 
quant. There  was  formerly  a  good  deal  of  discussion 
as  to  who  wrote  the  once  famous  "Jack  Downing" 
letters,  but  we  might  almost  say  that  they  wrote 
themselves.  Nobody  was  ever  less  of  a  humorist 
than  Andrew  Jackson,  and  it  was  therefore  the  more 
essential  that  he  should  be  the  cause  of  humor  in 
others.  It  was  simply  inevitable  that  during  his 
progresses  through  the  country  there  should  be  some 

413 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

amusing  shadow  evoked,  some  Yankee  parody  of  the 
man,  such  as  came  from  two  or  three  quarters  under 
the  name  of  Jack  Downing.  The  various  records  of 
Monroe's  famous  tours  are  as  tame  as  the  speeches 
which  these  expeditions  brought  forth,  and  John 
Quincy  Adams  never  made  any  popular  demonstra- 
tions to  chronicle;  but  wherever  Jackson  went  there 
went  the  other  Jack,  the  crude  first-fruits  of  what  is 
now  known  through  the  world  as  "American  hu- 
mor." Jack  Downing  wras  Mark  Twain  and  Hosea 
Biglow  and  Artemus  Ward  in  one.  The  impetuous 
President  enraged  many  and  delighted  many,  but  it 
is  something  to  know  that  under  him  a  serious  peo- 
ple first  found  that  it  knew  how  to  laugh. 

The  very  extreme,  the  perfectly  needless  extreme, 
of  political  foreboding  that  marked  the  advent  of 
Jackson  furnished  a  background  of  lurid  solemnity 
for  all  this  light  comedy.  Samuel  Breck  records  in 
his  diary  that  he  conversed  with  Daniel  Webster  in 
Philadelphia,  March  24,  1827,  upon  the  prospects  of 
the  government.  "Sir,"  said  Webster,  "if  General 
Jackson  is  elected,  the  government  of  our  country 
will  be  overthrown;  the  judiciary  will  be  destroyed; 
Mr.  Justice  Johnson  will  be  made  Chief -justice  in  the 
room  of  Mr.  Marshall,  who  must  soon  retire,  and  then 
in  half  an  hour  Mr.  Justice  Washington  and  Mr.  Justice 
Story  will  resign.  A  majority  will  be  left  with  Mr. 
Johnson,  and  every  constitutional  decision  hitherto 
made  will  be  reversed."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  none 
of  these  results  followed.  Mr.  Justice  Johnson  never 
became  Chief -justice ;  Mr.  Marshall  retained  that  of- 
fice till  his  death  in  1835  ;  Story  and  Washington  also 
died  in  office ;  the  judiciary  was  not  overthrown  or  the 
government  destroyed.     But  the  very  ecstasy  of  these 

414 


"OLD    HICKORY" 

fears  stimulated  the  excitement  of  the  public  mind. 
No  matter  how  extravagant  the  supporters  of 
Jackson  might  be,  they  could  hardly  go  further 
in  that  direction  than  did  the  Websters  in  the 
other. 

But  it  was  not  the  fault  of  the  Jackson  party  if 
anybody  went  beyond  them  in  exaggeration.  An 
English  traveller,  William  E.  Alexander,  going  in  a 
stage-coach  from  Baltimore  to  Washington  in  1831, 
records  the  exuberant  conversation  of  six  editors, 
with  whom  he  was  shut  up  for  hours.  "The  gentle- 
men of  the  press,"  he  says,  "talked  of  'going  the 
whole  hog '  for  one  another,  of  being  '  up  to  the  hub ' 
(nave)  for  General  Jackson,  who  was  'all  brimstone 
but  the  head,  and  that  was  aqua-fortis,'  and  swore 
if  any  one  abused  him  he  ought  to  be  '  set  straddle 
on  an  iceberg,  and  shot  through  with  a  streak  of 
lightning.'"  Somewhere  between  the  dignified  de- 
spair of  Daniel  Webster  and  the  admiring  slang  of 
these  gentry,  we  must  look  for  the  actual  truth  about 
Jackson's  administration.  The  fears  of  the  states- 
man were  not  wholly  groundless,  for  it  is  always  hard 
to  count  in  advance  upon  the  tendency  of  high  office 
to  make  men  more  reasonable.  The  enthusiasm  of 
the  journalists  had  a  certain  foundation ;  at  any  rate, 
it  was  a  part  of  their  profession  to  like  stirring  times, 
and  they  had  now  the  promise  of  them.  After 
twelve  years  of  tolerably  monotonous  government, 
any  party  of  editors  in  America,  assembled  in  a  stage- 
coach, would  have  showered  epithets  of  endearment 
on  the  man  who  gave  such  promise  in  the  way  of 
lively  items.  No  acute  journalist  could  help  seeing 
that  a  man  had  a  career  before  him  who  was  called 
"Old  Hickory"  by  three-quarters  of  the  nation;  and 

415 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

who  made  "Hurrah  for  Jackson!"  a  cry  so  potent 
that  it  had  the  force  of  a  popular  decree. 

There  was,  indeed,  unbounded  room  for  popular 
enthusiasm  in  the  review  of  Jackson's  early  career. 
Born  in  North  Carolina,  he  had  a  childhood  of  poverty 
and  ignorance.  He  was  taken  prisoner  as  a  mere 
boy  during  the  Revolution,  and  could  never  forget 
that  he  had  been  wounded  by  a  British  officer  whose 
boots  he  had  refused  to  brush.  Afterwards,  in  a 
frontier  community,  he  was  successively  farmer, 
shopkeeper,  law  student,  lawyer,  district  attorney, 
judge,  and  Congressman,  being  first  Representative 
from  Tennessee,  and  then  Senator — and  all  before 
the  age  of  thirty-one.  In  Congress  Albert  Gallatin 
describes  him  as  "a  tall,  lank,  uncouth-looking  per- 
sonage, with  long  locks  of  hair  hanging  over  his  brows 
and  face,  and  a  queue  down  his  back  tied  in  an  eel- 
skin  ;  his  dress  singular,  his  manners  and  deportment 
those  of  a  backwoodsman."  He  remained,  how- 
ever, but  a  year  or  two  in  all  at  Philadelphia — then 
the  seat  of  national  government — and  afterwards  be- 
came a  planter  in  Tennessee,  fought  duels,  subdued 
Tecumseh  and  the  Creek  Indians,  winning  finally  the 
great  opportunity  of  his  life  by  being  made  a  major- 
general  in  the  United  States  army  on  May  31,  18 14. 
He  now  had  his  old  captors,  the  British,  with  whom 
to  deal,  and  he  entered  into  the  work  with  a  relish. 
By  way  of  preliminary  he  took  Pensacola,  without 
any  definite  authority,  from  the  Spaniards,  to  whom 
it  belonged,  and  from  the  English  whom  they  har- 
bored; and  then  turned,  without  orders,  without 
support,  and  without  supplies,  to  undertake  the  de- 
fence of  New  Orleans. 

Important  as  was  this  city,  and  plain  as  it  was  that 

416 


"OLD    HICKORY" 

the  British  threatened  it,  the  national  authorities 
had  done  nothing  to  defend  it.  The  impression  pre- 
vailed at  Washington  that  it  must  already  have  been 
taken,  but  that  the  President  would  not  let  it  be 
known.  The  Washington  Republican  of  January  17, 
181 5,  said,  "That  Mr.  Madison  will  find  it  convenient 
and  will  finally  determine  to  abandon  the  State  of 
Louisiana  we  have  not  a  doubt."  A  New  York 
newspaper  of  January  30th,  three  weeks  after  New 
Orleans  had  been  saved,  said,  "  It  is  the  general  opin- 
ion here  that  the  city  of  New  Orleans  must  fall." 
Apparently  but  one  thing  had  averted  its  fall — the 
energy  and  will  of  Andrew  Jackson.  On  his  own 
responsibility  he  declared  martial  law,  impressed  sol- 
diers, seized  powder  and  supplies,  built  fortifications 
of  cotton  bales  and  anything  else  that  came  to  hand. 
When  the  news  of  the  battle  of  New  Orleans  came  to 
the  seat  of  government  it  was  almost  too  bewildering 
for  belief.  The  British  veterans  of  the  Peninsular 
war,  whose  march  wherever  they  had  landed  had 
heretofore  seemed  a  holiday  parade,  were  repulsed  in 
a  manner  so  astounding  that  their  loss,  in  killed  and 
wounded,  was  more  than  two  thousand,  while  that 
of  the  Americans  was  but  thirteen  (January  8,  18 15). 
By  a  single  stroke  the  national  self-respect  was  re- 
stored; and  Henry  Clay,  at  Paris,  said,  "Now  I  can 
go  to  England  without  mortification." 

All  these  things  must  be  taken  into  account  in 
estimating  what  Dr.  Von  Hoist  calls  "the  reign  of 
Andrew  Jackson."  After  this  climax  of  military  suc- 
cess he  was  for  a  time  employed  on  frontier  service, 
again  went  to  Florida  to  fight  Englishmen  and  Span- 
iards, practically  conquering  that  region  in  a  few 
weeks,  but   this    time  with   an  overwhelming  force. 

4i7 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Already  his  impetuosity  had  proved  to  have  a  trouble- 
some side  to  it ;  he  had  violated  neutral  territory,  had 
hanged  two  Indians  without  justification,  and  had 
put  to  death,  with  no  authority,  two  Englishmen, 
Ambrister  and  Arbuthnot.  These  irregularities  did 
not  harm  him  in  the  judgment  of  his  admirers ;  they 
seemed  in  the  line  of  his  character,  and  helped  more 
than  they  hurt  him.  In  the  winter  of  1823-24  he 
was  again  chosen  a  Senator  from  Tennessee.  Thence- 
forth he  was  in  the  field  as  a  candidate  for  the  Presi- 
dency, with  two  things  to  aid  him — his  own  immense 
popularity  and  a  skilful  friend.  This  friend  was  one 
William  B.  Lewis,  a  man  in  whom  all  the  arts  of  the 
modern  wire-puller  seemed  to  be  born  full-grown. 

There  was  at  that  time  (1824)  no  real  division  in 
parties.  The  Federalists  had  been  effectually  put 
down,  and  every  man  who  aspired  to  office  claimed 
to  be  Democratic-Republican.  Nominations  were 
irregularly  made,  sometimes  by  a  Congressional  cau- 
cus, sometimes  by  State  Legislatures.  Tennessee, 
and  afterwards  Pennsylvania,  nominated  Jackson. 
When  it  came  to  the  election,  he  proved  to  be  by  all 
odds  the  popular  candidate.  Professor  W.  G.  Sumner, 
counting  up  the  vote  of  the  people,  finds  155,800  votes 
for  Jackson,  105,300  for  Adams,  44,200  for  Crawford, 
46,000  for  Clay.  Even  with  this  strong  popular  vote 
before  it,  the  House  of  Representatives,  balloting  by 
States,  elected,  as  has  been  seen,  John  Quincy  Adams. 
Seldom  in  our  history  has  the  cup  of  power  come  so 
near  to  the  lips  of  a  candidate  and  been  dashed  away 
again.  Yet  nothing  is  surer  in  a  republic  than  a 
certain  swing  of  the  pendulum,  afterwards,  in  favor 
of  any  candidate  to  whom  a  special  injustice  has 
been  done ;  and  in  the  case  of  a  popular  favorite  like 

418 


"OLD    HICKORY" 

Jackson  this  recoil  might  have  been  foreseen  to  be 
irresistible.  His  election  four  years  later  was  almost 
a  foregone  conclusion,  but,  as  if  to  make  it  wholly 
sure,  there  came  up  the  rumor  of  a  "corrupt  bar- 
gain" between  the  successful  candidate  and  Mr. 
Clay,  whose  forces  had  indeed  joined  with  those  of 
Mr.  Adams  to  make  a  majority.  For  General  Jack- 
son there  could  be  nothing  more  fortunate.  The 
mere  ghost  of  a  corrupt  bargain  is  worth  many  thou- 
sand votes  to  the  lucky  man  whose  supporters  conjure 
up  the  ghost. 

When  it  came  to  the  turn  of  the  Adams  party  to  be 
defeated,  in  1828,  they  attributed  this  result  partly 
to  the  depravity  of  the  human  heart,  partly  to  the 
tricks  of  Jackson,  and  partly  to  the  unfortunate  tem- 
perament of  Adams.  The  day  after  a  candidate  is 
beaten  everybody  knows  why  it  was,  and  says  it 
was  just  what  any  one  might  have  foreseen.  Ezekiel 
Webster,  writing  from  New  Hampshire,  laid,  the  re- 
sult chiefly  on  the  nominee,  whom  everybody  dis- 
liked, and  who  would  persist  in  leaving  his  bitter  op- 
ponents in  office.  The  people,  Webster  said,  "al- 
ways supported  his  cause  from  a  cold  sense  of  duty, 
and  not  from  any  liking  of  the  man.  We  soon  satisfy 
ourselves,"  he  added,  "that  we  have  discharged  our 
duty  to  the  cause  of  any  man  when  we  do  not  enter- 
tain for  him  one  personal  kind  feeling,  nor  cannot, 
unless  we  disembowel  ourselves,  like  a  trussed  turkey, 
of  all  that  is  human  within  us."  There  is,  indeed,  no 
doubt  that  Adams  helped  on  his  own  defeat,  both 
by  his  defects  and  by  what  would  now  be  considered 
his  virtues.  The  trouble,  however,  lay  further  back. 
Ezekiel  Webster  thought  that  "if  there  had  been  at 
the  head  of  affairs  a  man  of  popular  character,  like 

419 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Mr.  Clay,  or  any  man  whom  we  were  not  compelled 
by  our  natures,  instinct,  and  fixed  fate  to  dislike,  the 
result  would  have  been  different."  But  we  can  now 
see  that  all  this  would  really  have  made  no  difference 
at  all.  Had  Adams  been  personally  the  most  at- 
tractive of  men,  instead  of  being  a  conscientious 
iceberg,  the  same  result  would  have  followed,  and 
the  people  would  have  felt  that  Jackson's  turn  had 
come. 

Accordingly,  the  next  election,  that  of  1828,  was 
easily  settled.  Jackson  had  178  electoral  votes, 
Adams  but  83 — more  than  two  to  one.  Adams  had 
not  an  electoral  vote  south  of  the  Potomac  or  west 
of  the  Alleghanies,  though  Daniel  Webster,  writing 
to  Jeremiah  Mason,  had  predicted  that  he  would 
carry  six  western  and  southern  States.  In  Georgia 
no  Adams  ticket  was  even  nominated,  he  being  there 
unpopular  for  one  of  his  best  acts — the  protection  of 
the  Cherokees.  On  the  other  hand,  but  one  Jackson 
elector  was  chosen  from  New  England,  and  he  by 
less  than  two  hundred  majority.  This  was  in  the 
Maine  district  that  included  Bowdoin  College,  and  I 
have  heard  from  an  old  friend  of  mine  the  tale  of 
how  he,  being  then  a  student  at  Bowdoin,  tolled  the 
college  bell  at  midnight  to  express  the  shame  of  the 
students,  although  the  elector  thus  chosen  (Judge 
Preble)  was  the  own  uncle  of  this  volunteer  sexton. 
It  would  have  required  many  college  bells  to  an- 
nounce the  general  wrath  of  New  England,  which  was 
not  diminished  by  the  fact  that  Calhoun,  another 
Southerner,  was  chosen  Vice-president  over  Richard 
Rush.  To  be  sure,  Calhoun  had  filled  the  same 
office  under  John  Quincy  Adams,  but  then  there  was 
a  northern  man  for  President.      For  the  first  time 

420 


l4OLD    HICKORY" 

the  lines  seemed  distinctly  drawn  for  the  coming  sec- 
tional antagonism.     • 

But  even  this  important  fact  was  really  quite  sub- 
ordinate, for  the  time  being,  in  men's  minds.  The 
opposition  to  Jackson,  like  his  popularity,  was  per- 
sonal. It  was  not  a  mere  party  matter.  The  older 
statesmen  distrusted  him,  without  much  regard  to 
their  political  opinions.  When  Monroe  asked  Jeffer- 
son, in  1818,  if  it  would  not  be  well  to  give  Jackson 
the  embassy  to  Russia,  Jefferson  utterly  disapproved 
it.  "He  would  breed  you  a  quarrel,"  he  said,  "be- 
fore he  had  been  there  a  month."  At  a  later  period 
Jefferson  said  to  Daniel  Webster:  "  I  feel  much  alarm- 
ed at  the  prospect  of  seeing  General  Jackson  Presi- 
dent. He  is  one  of  the  most  unfit  men  I  know  of 
for  such  a  place.  He  has  had  very  little  respect  for 
laws  or  constitutions,  and  is,  in  fact,  an  able  military 
chief.  His  passions  are  terrible.  When  I  was  Presi- 
dent of  the  Senate  he  was  a  Senator,  and  he  could 
never  speak  on  account  of  the  rashness  of  his  feelings. 
I  have  seen  him  attempt  it  repeatedly,  and  as  often 
choke  with  rage.  His  passions  are  no  doubt  cooler 
now ;  he  has  been  much  tried  since  I  knew  him ;  but 
he  is  a  dangerous  man."  And  dangerous  indeed  the 
public  office-holders  soon  found  him.  As  has  been 
already  seen,  a  large  part  of  those  who  held  office 
under  Adams  were  already  partisans  of  Jackson ;  but 
the  rest  soon  discovered  that  a  changed  policy  had 
come  in.  Between  March  4,  1829,  and  March  22, 
1830,  491  postmasters  and  230  other  officers  were  re- 
moved, making,  as  it  was  thought,  with  their  sub- 
ordinates, at  least  two  thousand  political  changes. 
Mr.  Sumner  well  points  out  that  it  is  unfair  to  charge 
this,  as  we  often  do,  solely  upon  Jackson.    Crawford, 

421 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

as  has  already  been  seen,  prepared  the  way  for  the 
practice;  it  had  been  perfected  in  the  local  politics 
of  New  York  and  Pennsylvania.  It  was  simply  a 
disease  which  the  nation  must  undergo — must  ulti- 
mately get  rid  of,  indeed,  unless  destroyed  by  it; 
but  it  will  always  be  identified,  by  coincidence  of 
time  at  least,  with  the  Presidency  of  Andrew  Jackson. 
If  not  the  father  of  the  evil,  he  will  always  stand  in 
history  as  its  godfather. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  in  political  history  that  a  public 
man  is  almost  always,  to  a  certain  extent,  truthfully 
criticised  by  the  party  opposed  to  him.  His  oppo- 
nents may  exaggerate,  they  may  distort,  but  they  are 
rarely  altogether  wrong ;  their  criticism  generally  goes 
to  the  right  point,  and  finds  out  the  weak  spot.  Jack- 
son was  as  vehemently  attacked  as  Jefferson,  and  by 
the  same  class  of  people,  but  the  points  of  the  criti- 
cism were  wholly  different.  Those  who  had  habit- 
ually denounced  Jefferson  for  being  timid  in  action 
were  equally  hard  on  Jackson  for  brimming  over  with 
superfluous  courage  and  being  ready  to  slap  every 
one  in  the  face.  The  discrimination  of  charges  was 
just.  A  merely  vague  and  blundering  assailant  would 
have  been  just  as  likely  to  call  Jackson  a  coward  and 
Jefferson  a  fire-eater,  which  would  have  been  absurd. 
The  summing  up  of  the  Federalist  William  Sullivan, 
written  in  1834,  was  not  so  very  far  from  the  sober 
judgment  of  posterity.  "  Andrew  Jackson.  ...  is  a 
sort  of  lusus  reipubltcce,  held  by  no  rules  or  laws,  and 
who  honestly  believes  his  sycophants  that  he  was 
born  to  command.  With  a  head  and  heart  not  bet- 
ter than  Thomas  Jefferson  had,  but  freed  from  the 
inconvenience  of  that  gentleman's  constitutional 
timidity,  and  familiar  with  the  sword,  he  has  dis- 

422 


"OLD    HICKORY" 

closed  the  real  purpose  of  the  American  people  in 
fighting  the  battles  of  the  Revolution  and  establish- 
ing a  national  republic — viz.,  that  the  will  of  Andrew 
Jackson  shall  be  the  law  and  only  law  of  the  re- 
public." 

Really  General  Jackson  himself  would  not  have 
greatly  objected  to  this  estimate  could  he  have  had 
patience  to  read  it.  He  was  singularly  free  from 
hypocrisy  or  concealment,  was  not  much  of  a  talker, 
and  took  very  little  trouble  to  invent  fine  names  for 
what  he  did.  But  on  another  point  where  he  was 
as  sharply  criticised  he  was  very  vulnerable ;  like  most 
ignorant  and  self-willed  men,  he  was  easily  managed 
by  those  who  understood  him.  Here  again  was  a  good 
illustration  of  the  discernment  of  even  vehement  ene- 
mies. Nobody  charged  Jefferson  with  being  over- 
influenced  by  a  set  of  inferior  men,  though  all  the  op- 
position charged  Jackson  with  it.  The  reason  was 
that  in  this  last  case  it  was  true ;  and  during  the  greater 
part  of  Jackson's  two  administrations  there  was  con- 
stant talk  of  what  Webster  called  trie  ''cabinet  im- 
proper," as  distinct  from  the  cabinet  proper — what 
was  known  in  popular  phrase  as  the  "kitchen  cabi- 
net." Here  again  came  in  the  felicity  of  Jack  Down- 
ing's  portraiture.  The  familiarity  with  which  this 
imaginary  ally  pulled  off  the  President's  boots  or 
wore  his  old  clothes  hardly  surpassed  the  undignified 
attitudes  popularly  attributed  to  Swartwout  and  Hill 
and  Van  Buren. 

On  the  day  of  his  inauguration  the  President  was 
received  in  Washington  with  an  ardor  that  might 
have  turned  a  more  modest  head.  On  the  day  when 
the  new  administration  began  (March  4,  1829),  Daniel 
Webster  wrote  to  his  sister-in-law,  with  whom  he  had 

423 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

left  his  children  that  winter:  "To-day  we  have  had 
the  inauguration.  A  monstrous  crowd  of  people  is 
in  the  city.  I  never  saw  anything  like  it  before. 
Persons  have  come  five  hundred  miles  to  see  Gen- 
eral Jackson,  and  they  really  seem  to  think  that  the 
country  is  rescued  from  some  frightful  danger."  It  is 
difficult  now  to  see  what  this  peril  was  supposed  to  be ; 
but  we  know  that  the  charges  of  monarchical  ten- 
dency made  against  John  Adams  had  been  renewed 
against  his  son — a  renewal  that  seems  needless  in 
case  of  a  man  so  scrupulously  republican  that  he 
would  not  use  a  seal  ring,  and  so  unambitious  that 
he  always  sighed  after  the  quieter  walks  of  literature. 
Equally  unjust  was  the  charge  of  extravagance  against 
the  younger  Adams,  who  kept  the  White  House  in 
better  order  than  his  predecessor  on  less  than  half  the 
appropriation — an  economy  wholly  counterbalanced 
in  some  minds  by  the  fact  that  he  had  put  in  a  billiard- 
table.  But  however  all  this  may  have  been,  the  fact 
is  certain  that  no  President  had  yet  entered  the 
White  House  amid  such  choruses  of  delight  as  were 
called  forth  by  Jackson ;  nor  did  it  happen  again  until 
his  pupil,  Van  Buren,  yielded,  amid  equal  popular 
enthusiasm,  to  another  military  hero,  Harrison. 

For  the  social  life  of  Washington  the  President  had 
one  advantage  which  was  altogether  unexpected,  and 
seemed  difficult  of  explanation  by  anything  in  his 
earlier  career.  He  had  at  his  command  the  most 
courteous  and  agreeable  manners.  Even  before  the 
election  of  Adams,  Daniel  Webster  had  written  to 
his  brother:  "General  Jackson's  manners  are  better 
than  those  of  any  of  the  candidates.  He  is  grave, 
mild,  and  reserved.  My  wife  is  for  him  decidedly." 
And  long  after,  when  the  President  was  to  pass  in  re- 

424 


"OLD    HICKORY " 

view  before  those  who  were  perhaps  his  most  im- 
placable opponents,  the  ladies  of  Boston,  we  have 
the  testimony  of  the  late  Josiah  Quincy,  in  his  Fig- 
ures from  the  Past,  that  the  personal  bearing  of  this 
obnoxious  official  was  most  unwillingly  approved. 
Quincy  was  detailed  by  Governor  Lincoln,  on  whose 
military  staff  he  was,  to  attend  President  Jackson 
everywhere  when  visiting  Boston  in  1833;  and  this 
narrator  testifies  that,  with  every  prejudice  against 
Jackson,  he  found  him  essentially  "a  knightly  per- 
sonage —  prejudiced,  narrow,  mistaken  on  many 
points,  it  might  be,  but  vigorously  a  gentleman  in  his 
high  sense  of  honor  and  in  the  natural  straightfor- 
ward courtesies  which  are  easily  distinguished  from 
the  veneer  of  policy."  Sitting  erect  on  his  horse,  a 
thin,  stiff  type  of  military  strength,  he  carried  with 
him  in  the  streets  a  bearing  of  such  dignity  that  staid 
old  Bostonians  who  had  refused  even  to  look  upon 
him  from  their  windows  would  finally  be  coaxed  into 
taking  one  peep,  and  would  then  hurriedly  bring  for- 
ward their  little  daughters  to  wave  their  handker- 
chiefs. He  wrought,  Quincy  declares,  "a  mysteri- 
ous charm  upon  old  and  young";  showed,  although 
in  feeble  health,  a  great  consideration  for  others ;  and 
was  in  private  a  really  agreeable  companion.  It  ap- 
pears from  these  reminiscences  that  the  President 
was  not  merely  the  cause  of  wit  in  others,  but  now 
and  then  appreciated  it  himself,  and  that  he  used  to 
listen  with  delight  to  the  reading  of  the  "  Jack  Down- 
ing" letters,  laughing  heartily  sometimes,  and  de- 
claring, "The  Vice-president  must  have  written  that. 
Depend  upon  it,  Jack  Downing  is  only  Van  Buren  in 
masquerade."  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  satirist 
is  already  the  better  remembered  of  the  two,  although 
28  425 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Van  Buren  was  in  his  day  so  powerful  as  to  preside 
over  the  official  patronage  of  the  nation,  and  to  be 
called  the  "Little  Magician." 

But  whatever  personal  attractions  of  manner  Presi- 
dent Jackson  may  have  had,  he  threw  away  his  social 
leadership  at  Washington  by  a  single  act  of  what 
may  have  been  misapplied  chivalry.  This  act  was 
what  Mr.  Morse  has  tersely  called  4 '  the  importation 
of  Mrs.  Eaton's  visiting  list  into  the  politics  and  gov- 
ernment of  the  country."  It  was  the  nearest  ap- 
proach yet  made  under  our  masculine  political  in- 
stitutions to  those  eminent  scandals  which  constitute 
the  minor  material  of  court  historians  in  Europe. 
The  heroine  of  the  comedy,  considered  merely  as 
Peggy  O'Neil,  daughter  of  a  Washington  innkeeper 
— or  as  Mrs.  Timberlake,  the  wife  of  a  naval  purser 
who  had  committed  suicide  because  of  strong  drink — 
might  have  seemed  more  like  a  personage  out  of  one 
of  Fielding's  novels  than  as  a  feature  in  the  history 
of  an  administration ;  but  when  fate  at  last  made  her 
Mrs.  Secretary  Eaton  she  became  one  who  could  dis- 
turb cabinets  and  annihilate  friendships.  It  was  not 
merely  out  of  regard  for  her  personal  wrongs  that  all 
this  took  place,  but  there  was  a  long  history  behind 
it.  There  had  been  a  little  irregularity  about  Presi- 
dent Jackson's  own  marriage.  He  had  espoused  his 
wife  after  a  supposed  divorce  from  a  previous  hus- 
band; and  when  the  divorce  really  took  place  the 
ceremony  had  to  be  repeated.  Moreover,  as  the  di- 
vorce itself  had  originally  been  based  on  some  scandal 
about  Jackson,  he  was  left  in  a  state  of  violent  sensi- 
tiveness on  the  whole  matrimonial  question.  Mrs. 
Eaton  had  nothing  in  the  world  to  do  with  all  this, 
but  she  got  the  benefit  of  it.     The  mere  fact  that  she 

426 


k'OLD    HICKORY" 

to  whom  the  President  had  good-naturedly  nodded 
as  Peggy  O'Neil  had  been  censured  by  his  own  officials, 
after  she  had  become  the  wife  of  one  of  them,  was 
enough  to  enrage  him. 

For  once  he  overestimated  his  powers.  He  had 
conquered  Indian  tribes  and  checked  the  army  of 
Great  Britain,  but  the  ladies  of  Washington  society 
were  too  much  for  him.  Every  member  of  his  cabi- 
net expressed  the  utmost  approval  of  his  position, 
but  they  said  with  one  accord  that  those  matters 
must  be  left  to  their  wives.  Mrs.  Donelson,  his  own 
niece — that  is,  the  wife  of  his  nephew,  and  the  lady 
who  received  company  for  him  at  the  White  House — 
would  not  receive  Mrs.  Eaton,  and  was  sent  back  to 
Tennessee.  Mrs.  Calhoun,  the  wife  of  the  Vice-presi- 
dent, took  the  same  attitude,  and  ruined  thereby  her 
husband's  political  prospects,  Calhoun  being  ut- 
terly superseded  in  the  President's  good  graces  by 
Van  Buren,  who,  being  a  widower,  could  pay  at- 
tention to  the  offending  fair  one  without  let  or  hin- 
derance.  Through  his  influence  Baron  Krudener,  the 
Russian  Minister,  and  Vaughan,  the  British  Min- 
ister, both  bachelors,  gave  entertainments  at  which 
"Bellona,"  as  the  newspapers  afterwards  called  the 
lady,  from  her  influence  in  creating  strife,  was  pres- 
ent. It  did  no  good;  every  dance  in  which  she  stood 
up  to  take  part  was,  in  the  words  of  a  Washington 
letter-writer,  "  instantly  dissolved  into  its  original 
elements,"  and  though  she  was  placed  at  the  head  of 
the  supper- table,  every  lady  present  ignored  her  very 
existence.  Thus  the  amenities  of  Van  Buren  were 
as  powerless  as  the  anger  of  Jackson ;  but  the  astute 
Secretary  won  the  President's  heart,  and  with  it  that 
of  his  whole  immediate  circle — cabinet  proper  and 

427 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

cabinet  improper.  It  was  one  of  the  things  that  turn- 
ed the  scale  between  Calhoun  and  Van  Buren,  putting 
the  New  York  "  magician"  in  line  for  the  Presidential 
succession;  and  in  this  way  Peggy  O'Neil  had  an  ap- 
preciable influence  on  the  political  history  of  the 
nation.  It  was  fortunate  that  she  did  not  also  lead 
to  foreign  embroilments,  for  the  wife  of  the  Dutch 
Minister  once  refused  to  sit  next  to  her  at  a  public 
entertainment,  upon  which  the  President  threatened 
to  demand  the  Minister's  recall.  All  this  time  Jack- 
son himself  remained  utterly  free  from  scandal,  nor 
did  his  enemies  commonly  charge  him  with  anything 
beyond  ill-timed  quixotism.  But  it  shows  how  femi- 
nine influence  creeps  inside  of  all  political  barriers, 
and  recalls  Charles  Churchill's  couplet: 

"Women,  who've  oft  as  sovereigns  graced  the  land, 
But  never  governed  well  at  second-hand." 

The  two  acts  with  which  the  administration  of 
President  Jackson  will  be  longest  identified  are  his 
dealings  with  South  Carolina  in  respect  to  nullifica- 
tion and  his  long  warfare  with  the  United  States 
Bank.  The  first  brought  the  New  England  States 
back  to  him,  and  the  second  took  them  away  again. 
He  perhaps  won  rather  more  applause  than  he  merited 
by  the  one  act,  and  more  condemnation  than  was 
just  for  the  other.  Let  us  first  consider  the  matter 
of  nullification.  When  various  southern  States — 
Georgia,  at  first,  not  South  Carolina,  taking  the  lead 
— had  quarrelled  with  the  tariff  of  1828,  and  openly 
threatened  to  set  it  aside,  they  evidently  hoped  for 
the  co-operation  of  the  President ;  or  at  least  for  that 
silent  acquiescence  he  had  shown  when  Georgia  had 
been  almost  equally  turbulent  on  the  Indian  question, 

428 


"OLD    HICKORY" 

and  he  would  not  interfere,  as  his  predecessor  had 
done,  to  protect  the  treaty  rights  of  the  Indian  tribes. 
The  whole  South  was  therefore  startled  when  he  gave, 
at  a  banquet  on  Jefferson's  birthday  (April  13,  1830), 
a  toast  that  now  seems  commonplace — ' '  The  Federal 
Union;  it  must  be  preserved."  But  this  was  not  all; 
when  the  time  came  he  took  vigorous,  if  not  alto- 
gether consistent,  steps  to  preserve  it. 

When,  in  November,  1832,  South  Carolina  for  the 
first  time  officially  voted  that  certain  tariff  acts  were 
null  and  void  in  that  State,  the  gauntlet  of  defiance 
was  fairly  thrown  down,  and  Jackson  picked  it  up. 
He  sent  General  Scott  to  take  command  at  Charles- 
ton, with  troops  near  by,  and  two  gun-boats  at  hand ; 
he  issued  a  dignified  proclamation,  written  by  Living- 
ston (December  10,  1832),  which  pronounced  the  act 
of  South  Carolina  contradictory  to  the  Constitution, 
unauthorized  by  it,  and  destructive  of  its  aims.  So 
far,  so  good;  but  unfortunately  the  President  had, 
the  week  before  (December  4,  1832),  sent  a  tariff  mes- 
sage to  Congress,  of  which  John  Quincy  Adams  wrote, 
"  It  goes  far  to  dissolve  the  Union  into  its  original  ele- 
ments, and  is  in  substance  a  complete  surrender  into 
the  hands  of  the  milliners  of  South  Carolina."  Then 
came  Mr.  Clay's  compromise  tariff  of  1833,  following 
in  part  the  line  indicated  by  this  message,  and  achiev- 
ing, as  Mr.  Calhoun  said,  a  victory  for  nullification — 
leaving  the  matter  a  drawn  game,  at  any  rate.  The 
action  of  Jackson,  being  thus  accompanied,  settled 
nothing ;  it  was  like  valiantly  ordering  a  burglar  out 
of  your  house  with  a  pistol,  and  adding  the  suggestion 
that  he  will  find  a  portion  of  the  family  silver  on  the 
hall  table,  ready  packed  for  his  use,  as  he  goes  out. 

Nevertheless,  the  burglar  was  gone  for  the  moment, 

429 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

and  the  President  had  the  credit  of  it.  He  had  al- 
ready been  re-elected  by  an  overwhelming  majority 
in  November,  1832,  receiving  219  electoral  votes,  and 
Clay  49 ;  while  Floyd  had  the  1 1  votes  of  South  Caro- 
lina (which  still  chose  electors  by  its  legislature — a 
practice  now  abandoned),  and  Wirt  the  7  of  Vermont. 
Van  Buren  was  chosen  Vice-president,  being  nomi- 
nated in  place  of  Calhoun  by  the  Democratic  National 
Convention,  which  now  for  the  first  time  came  into 
operation.  The  President  was  thus  at  his  high- 
water  mark  of  popularity — always  a  dangerous  time 
for  a  public  man.  His  vehement  nature  accepted  his 
re-election  as  a  proof  that  he  was  right  in  everything, 
and  he  grew  more  self-confident  than  ever.  More 
imperiously  than  ever  he  ordered  about  friends  and 
opponents;  and  his  friends  repaid  it  by  guiding  his 
affairs,  unconsciously  to  himself.  Meantime  he  was 
encountering  another  enemy  of  greater  power,  be- 
cause more  silent,  than  southern  nullification,  and  he 
was  drifting  on  to  his  final  contest  with  the  United 
States  Bank. 

Sydney  Smith  says  that  every  Englishman  feels 
himself  able,  without  instruction,  to  drive  a  pony- 
chaise,  conduct  a  small  farm,  and  edit  a  newspaper. 
The  average  American  assumes,  in  addition  to  alt 
this,  that  he  is  competent  to  manage  a  bank.  Presi- 
dent Jackson  claimed  for  himself  in  this  respect  no 
more  than  his  fellows;  the  difference  was  in  strength 
of  will  and  in  possession  of  power.  A  man  so  igno- 
rant that  a  member  of  his  own  family,  according  to 
Mr.  Trist,  used  to  say  that  the  general  did  not  believe 
the  world  was  round,  might  easily  convince  himself 
that  he  knew  all  about  banking.  As  he  had,  besides 
all  this,  very  keen  observation  and    great   intuitive 

430 


"OLD    HICKORY" 

judgment  of  character,  he  was  probably  right  in  his 
point  of  attack.  There  is  little  doubt  that  the  bank 
of  the  United  States,  under  Nicholas  Biddle,  con- 
centrated in  itself  an  enormous  power;  and  it  spent 
in  four  years,  by  confession  of  its  directors,  $58,000 
in  what  they  called  "self-defence"  against  "poli- 
ticians." When,  on  July  10,  1832,  General  Jackson, 
in  a  long  message,  vetoed  the  bill  renewing  the  charter 
of  the  bank,  he  performed  an  act  of  courage,  taking 
counsel  with  his  instincts.  But  when  in  the  year 
following  he  performed  the  act  known  as  the  "re- 
moval of  the  deposits,"  or,  in  other  words,  caused 
the  public  money  to  be  no  longer  deposited  in  the 
National  Bank  and  its  twenty-five  branches,  but  in  a 
variety  of  State  banks  instead,  then  he  took  counsel 
of  his  ignorance. 

The  act  originally  creating  the  bank  had,  indeed, 
given  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  authority  to  re- 
move these  deposits  at  any  time,  he  afterwards  giv- 
ing to  Congress  his  reasons.  The  President  had  in 
vain  urged  Congress  to  order  the  change ;  that  body 
declined.  He  had  in  vain  urged  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  to  remove  them,  and  on  his  refusing,  had 
displaced  the  official  himself.  The  President  at  last 
found  a  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  (Roger  B.  Taney) 
to  order  the  removal,  or  rather  cessation,  of  deposits. 
The  consequence,  immediate  or  remote,  was  an  im- 
mense galvanizing  into  existence  of  State  banks,  and 
ultimately  a  vast  increase  of  paper-money.  The 
Sub-Treasury  system  had  not  then  been  thought  of; 
there  was  no  proper  place  of  deposit  for  the  public 
funds ;  their  possession  was  a  direct  stimulus  to  specu- 
lation; and  the  President's  cure  was  worse  than  the 
disease.     All  the  vast  inflation  of  1835  and  1836  and 

431 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  business  collapse  of  1837  were  due  to  the  fact 
not  merely  that  Andrew  Jackson  brought  all  his  vio- 
lent and  persistent  will  to  bear  against  the  United 
States  Bank,  but  that  when  he  got  the  power  into 
his  own  hands  he  did  not  know  what  to  do  with  it. 
Not  one  of  his  biographers — hardly  even  a  bigoted 
admirer,  so  far  as  I  know — now  claims  that  his  course 
in  this  respect  was  anything  but  a  mistake.  "No 
monster  bank,"  says  Professor  W.  G.  Sumner,  "un- 
der the  most  malicious  management,  could  have  pro- 
duced as  much  havoc,  either  political  or  financial,  as 
this  system  produced  while  it  lasted."  If  the  bank 
was,  as  is  now  generally  admitted,  a  dangerous  in- 
stitution, Jackson  was  in  the  right  to  resist  it ;  he  was 
right  even  in  disregarding  the  enormous  flood  of  pe- 
titions that  poured  in  to  its  support.  But  to  oppose 
a  dangerous  bank  does  not  necessarily  make  one  an 
expert  in  banking.  The  utmost  that  can  be  said  in 
favor  of  his  action  is  that  the  calamitous  results  show- 
ed the  great  power  of  the  institution  he  overthrew, 
and  that  if  he  had  let  it  alone  the  final  result  might 
have  been  as  bad. 

Two  new  States  were  added  to  the  Union  in  Presi- 
dent Jackson's  time — Arkansas  (1836)  and  Michigan 
(1837).  The  population  of  the  United  States  in  1830 
had  risen  to  nearly  thirteen  millions  (12,866,020). 
There  was  no  foreign  war  during  his  administration, 
although  one  with  France  was  barely  averted,  and  no 
domestic  contest  except  the  second  Seminole  war 
against  the  Florida  Indians — a  contest  in  which  these 
combatants  held  their  ground  so  well,  under  the  half- 
breed  chief  Osceola,  that  he  himself  was  only  captured 
by  the  violation  of  a  flag  of  truce.  The  war  being 
equally    carried    on    against    fugitive    slaves   called 

432 


"OLD    HICKORY'* 

Maroons,  who  had  intermarried  with  the  Indians,  did 
something  to  prepare  the  public  mind  for  a  new 
agitation  which  was  to  remould  American  political 
parties  and  to  modify  the  Constitution  of  the  nation. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  the  very  air  began  to 
be  filled  in  Jackson's  time  with  rumors  of  insurrections 
and  uprisings  in  different  parts  of  the  world.  The 
French  revolution  of  the  Three  Days  had  roused  all 
the  American  people  to  sympathy,  and  called  forth 
especial  enthusiasm  in  such  cities  as  Baltimore, 
Richmond,  and  Charleston.  The  Polish  revolution 
had  excited  universal  interest,  and  John  Randolph 
had  said,  "  The  Greeks  are  at  your  doors."  At  home 
the  antislavery  contest,  destined  to  be  for  more  than 
thirty  years  the  great  issue  of  American  politics,  was 
opening.  In  Garrison,  Jackson  for  once  met  a  will 
firmer  than  his  own,  because  more  steadfast  and 
moved  by  a  loftier  purpose.  Abolition  was  to  draw 
new  lines,  establish  new  standards,  and  create  new 
reputations;  and  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  the 
Democratic  President  did  not  abhor  it  more,  on  the 
one  side,  than  did  his  fiercest  Federalist  critics  on  the 
other.  One  of  the  ablest  of  them,  William  Sullivan, 
at  the  close  of  his  Familiar  Letters  on  Public  Char- 
acters, after  exhausting  language  to  depict  the  out- 
rages committed  by  President  Jackson,  points  out  as 
equally  objectionable  the  rising  antislavery  move- 
ment, and  predicts  that,  if  it  has  its  full  course, 
"even  an  Andrew  Jackson  may  be  a  blessing."  But 
of  the  wholly  new  series  of  events  which  were  to  date 
from  this  agitation  neither  Sullivan  nor  Jackson  had 
so  much  as  a  glimpse.  The  story  of  that  great  move- 
ment must  now  be  told. 

433      ' 


XIX 
ABOLITION     OF    SLAVERY 

IT  has  more  than  once  been  observed  that  slavery, 
notwithstanding  the  flood  of  writing  about  it,  still 
remains  not  only  the  most  interesting  but  also  the 
most  perplexing  institution  in  American  history.  On 
no  subject,  save  perhaps  the  causes  of  the  Revolution, 
have  we  been  offered  more  generalization  and  less 
fact.  The  trouble  has  usually  come  either  from  ex- 
clusive attention  to  some  one  phase  of  the  subject- 
its  territorial  aspect,  for  example— or  else  from  the 
assumption  that  slavery  itself  was  as  an  institution 
always  and  everywhere  the  same.  It  may  well  be 
for  most  students  the  beginning  of  wisdom  to  re- 
member that  slavery,  much  as  we  may  rejoice  at  the 
abolition  of  it,  was,  nevertheless,  like  all  social  insti- 
tutions, a  growth;  that  it  had  many  forms  and  turned 
to  mankind  many  sides;  and  that  it  was  a  distinct 
and  formative  element  in  American  life  for  more  than 
two  hundred  years  before  it  came  to  an  end.  And 
through  all  the  many  variations — social,  economic, 
political,  legal,  international — on  the  theme  there 
sounds  the  note  of  conscience,  not  always  clear  or 
strong,  but  growing  mightily  in  volume  and  domi- 
nance towards  the  end,  until  at  last  the  great  trans- 
formation occurred,  and  those  who  were  before  reck- 
oned as  property  were  at  last  reckoned  as  men. 

434 


ABOLITION    OF    SLAVERY 

The  introduction  of  African  negroes  into  Virginia, 
in  1619,  was  probably  somewhat  accidental,  and  it 
was  some  years  before  slavery  became  of  much  im- 
portance in  that  colony.  Carolina,  established  near- 
ly sixty  years  after  Virginia,  had  slavery  from  the 
start,  an  influential  element  in  its  population  being 
the  disaffected  English  planters  from  Barbadoes,  who 
brought  their  slaves  with  them.  The  northern  and 
middle  colonies,  too,  all  had  negro  slaves,  though 
in  New  England  the  institution  was  never  of  much 
importance.  Some  of  these  colonies  were,  moreover, 
trying  the  unprofitable  experiment  of  Indian  slavery 
as  well.  In  Virginia,  however,  where  the  slaves  were 
on  the  whole  best  treated,  there  was  throughout  the 
whole  colonial  period  strong  opposition  to  the  African 
slave-trade.  Down  to  1776  more  than  thirty  acts  of 
the  Virginia  Assembly,  imposing  restrictions  upon  the 
trade,  were  set  aside  by  the  King  in  council.  Dur- 
ing the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  the 
African  trade  was  mainly  in  the  hands  of  English 
merchants  and  capitalists,  who  for  a  long  period  held 
it  as  a  monopoly;  and  the  course  of  the  English  gov- 
ernment, controlled  as  it  was  largely  by  men  favor- 
able to  this  lucrative  industry,  operated  to  force 
African  negroes  upon  the  American  colonies.  One 
must  not  be  misled,  here,  however.  What  Virginia 
feared,  apparently,  was  not  the  mere  institution  of 
slavery  per  se,  but  rather  an  oversupply  of  slaves 
with  the  consequent  cheapening  of  their  price  and 
increased  danger  of  insurrection.  There  was  also 
a  just  fear  of  economic  injury  to  the  colony  from  the 
discouragement  of  free  labor  and  of  a  varied  indus- 
trial life.  Certain  it  was  that  free  labor,  itself  always 
honorable,   would  not  long  remain  by  the  side  of 

435 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

slave  labor.  Whether  or  not  slave  labor  is,  in  the 
true  sense,  "cheap" — labor,  that  is,  whose  cost  is 
small  in  proportion  to  the  value  of  what  it  produces 
— is  a  question  that  has  been  much  discussed.  It  is 
probable  that  for  a  time,  while  America  was  in  every- 
way a  new  country,  the  net  profit  of  slave  labor  was 
as  great  as  that  of  free  labor  would  have  been;  but 
there  was  a  future  as  well  as  a  present  to  consider. 
Slavery,  like  many  other  social  institutions,  has 
always  been  somewhat  a  matter  of  climate.  In  mod- 
ern times,  at  least,  it  has  never  flourished  outside  of 
tropical  or  semitropical  regions.  In  America  it  was 
early  seen  that  the  central  and  northern  portions  of 
the  Atlantic  coast,  not  being  fit  for  such  staple  prod- 
ucts as  rice  or  tobacco,  did  not  present  the  condi- 
tions necessary  for  the  development  of  negro  slavery ; 
and  although  slaves  continued  to  be  employed  in  all 
the  northern  colonies  for  many  years,  they  were 
mainly  house  servants,  and  their  numbers  steadily 
declined.  In  the  South,  on  the  other  hand,  slavery 
grew  with  the  growth  of  a  staple  agriculture,  until 
by  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  free  white 
labor,  save  for  a  few  skilled  employments,  had  been 
either  driven  out  altogether  or  put  socially  under  the 
ban.  The  contrast  between  the  sections  is  shown 
in  some  figures  returned  to  the  English  Board  of 
Trade  in  171 5.  New  England,  with  a  total  popula- 
tion of  161,650,  had  but  4150  slaves.  In  the  middle 
group  of  colonies  the  proportion  was  higher,  8000  of 
the  total  of  99,300  being  slaves.  In  the  four  southern 
colonies  of  Maryland,  Virginia,  and  the  Carolinas,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  total  population  of  173,150  in- 
cluded 46,700  slaves,  or  a  little  less  than  four  times 
as  many  as  in  the  other  eight  colonies  together.     In 

436 


ABOLITION    OF    SLAVERY 

South  Carolina  the  negroes  outnumbered  the  whites 
by  more  than  one-half. 

It  is  not  easy  to  speak  with  positiveness  regarding 
the  treatment  of  the  slaves  by  their  masters  in  either 
the  colonial  or  the  constitutional  period.  If  one 
were  to  judge  solely  from  the  statute  book,  punish- 
ments must  in  many  cases  have  been  ferocious ;  but, 
happily  for  the  good  name  of  America,  the  severer 
penalties  of  the  slave  codes  seem  to  have  been  rarely 
imposed.  We  do  not  read  in  the  records  many  ac- 
counts of  serious  offences  committed  by  negroes,  nor 
in  general  of  any  greater  lawlessness  in  the  slave 
colonies  or  States  than  elsewhere.  The  harsh  or 
brutal  owner  or  overseer  was  undoubtedly  to  be 
found,  as  one  finds  the  harsh  or  brutal  employer  or 
overseer  among  free  laborers  to-day,  but  the  better 
opinion  of  society  frowned  upon  him  in  the  one  case 
as  in  the  other.  As  a  rule,  the  slaves  seem  to  have 
been  well  fed,  well  cared  for,  well  treated,  and  not 
overworked.  If  they  were  unhappy,  they  were  at 
least  not  keenly  conscious  of  it.  On  one  point,  how- 
ever, there  was  tolerable  unanimity  of  opinion,  and 
that  was  that  the  negro  was  of  inferior  race,  incap- 
able of  civilization  beyond  a  rudimentary  stage,  and 
hence  the  foreordained  hewer  of  wood  and  drawer 
of  water  for  the  white,  who  alone  was  made  in  the 
image  of  God.  The  doctrine  of  "divine  right"  is 
most  commonly  associated  in  history  with  the  oc- 
cupants of  thrones;  in  the  United  States  it  was  the 
tacit  assumption  of  the  whole  white  race. 

By  the  beginning  of  the  government  under  the 
Constitution,  in  1789,  the  United  States  was  clearly 
divided  into  two  sections,  in  one  of  which  slavery 
nourished,  while  in  the  other  it  had  either  disap- 

437 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

peared    or   else    was    in    process    of    disappearance. 
Slavery  obviously  was  of  no  consequence  north  of 
Delaware  and  Maryland.     Vermont,   Massachusetts, 
Pennsylvania,   New  Hampshire,  Rhode  Island,   and 
Connecticut  had  already,  by  constitution  or  statute, 
declared  against  it,  and  they  were  shortly  to  be  fol- 
lowed by  New  York  and  New  Jersey.     It  was  in  the 
constitutional  convention  of  1787,  however,  that  the 
sectional  divergence  first  became  unmistakably  visi- 
ble— that  divergence  which,   two  generations  later, 
was  to  force  the  United  States  into  civil  war.     The 
issue  was  certainly  a  perplexing  one.     If,  in  the  ap- 
portionment of  members  of  the  national  House  of 
Representatives,  only  whites  were  to  be  counted,  the 
North  would  overbalance  the  South.     If  slaves  were 
to  be  counted,  every  northern  freeman  would  find 
himself  offset  by  a  negro  who  could  not  vote,  and 
who  had  in  law  few  rights  that  his  owner  was  bound 
to  respect.     How  the  controversy  was  settled  has 
already  been  told.     By  one  compromise  the  South 
was  allowed  to  count  three-fifths  of  its    slaves    in 
choosing  its   representatives,    while   by   another  its 
slave-trade  was  shielded  from  national  interference 
until  1808,   save  for  the  empty  privilege  of  taxing 
imported  slaves  at  the  rate  not  exceeding  ten  dollars 
a  head — a  privilege  which  Congress  never  exercised. 
Slavery  was  thus,  in  the  language  of  later  debates, 
"imbedded  in  the  Constitution,"  and  given  thereby 
a  strong  legal  claim  to  consideration. 

But  was  it  a  national  or  a  State  institution  ?  Had 
Congress  any  power  over  it?  The  answer  came  in 
1790,  when  the  House  of  Representatives,  replying 
to  memorials  submitted  to  it  by  the  Pennsylvania 
Society  for  the  Abolition  of  Slavery— of  which  the 

43* 


ABOLITION    OF    SLAVERY 

aged  Franklin  was  president — and  the  New  York 
yearly  meeting  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  decided  the 
question.  The  House  declared  that  while  Congress 
could  provide  by  law  for  the  humane  treatment  of 
slaves  on  the  voyage  from  Africa,  and  could  forbid 
American  citizens  from  furnishing  foreigners  with 
slaves,  it  had  no  power  under  the  Constitution  to  in- 
terfere with  slavery  in  any  State  or  with  the  treat- 
ment of  the  slaves  themselves.  Slavery,  in  other 
words,  was  a  "domestic  institution."  The  decision 
was  good  law,  and  for  seventy  years  was  the  ac- 
cepted rule  of  national  faith  and  conduct ;  but  would 
it  stand  the  strain  if  once  the  slavery  question  came 
to  be  generally  regarded,  not  alone  as  a  matter  of 
law,  but  also,  and  increasingly,  as  a  matter  of  con- 


science 


The  turning-point  in  the  history  of  slavery  came 
in  1793,  when  the  invention  of  the  cotton-gin  by  Eli 
Whitney  for  the  first  time  made  slave  labor  peculiar- 
ly profitable.  Prior  to  this  time,  a  single  able-bodied 
slave  could  in  a  day  clear  of  seed  perhaps  a  single 
pound  of  the  cotton  fibre.  By  use  of  the  gin  the 
same  slave  could  in  the  same  time  clean  several  hun- 
dred pounds.  The  economic  effect  of  this  simple  in- 
vention, taken  in  connection  with  the  development 
in  England  of  improved  machinery  for  making  cotton 
cloth,  was  profound  and  far  -  reaching.  Hitherto 
woollen  had  been  the  common  fabric  for  clothing  of 
all  sorts,  as  well  as  for  many  other  manufactured 
articles  of  which  cloth  formed  a  part.  Now,  how- 
ever, with  a  great  obstacle  to  extensive  production  sur- 
mounted, cotton  entered  the  market  at  a  price  which 
enabled  it  to  compete  with  wool;  and  the  demand 
grew  with  the  supply.     Among  all  American  staples, 

439 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

cotton  was  king.  And  from  the  day  of  its  enthrone- 
ment there  came  a  change  of  attitude  among  all 
classes  towards  slavery.  Gradual  emancipation,  the 
dream  of  many  a  southern  planter  and  the  earnest 
hope  of  men  like  Washington  and  Jefferson,  faded 
into  a  vague  hope.  The  demand  for  a  varied  indus- 
trial life  was  silenced  by  the  swelling  profitableness 
of  cotton-growing.  More  than  anything  else,  cotton 
dulled  the  ears  and  in  the  end  seared  the  consciences 
of  many  southern  slave-owners  to  the  economic  and 
moral  evils  of  their  "peculiar  institution."  Slavery 
now  paid  well,  and  therefore  it  was  encouraged. 
There  came  a  change,  too,  in  the  attitude  towards 
the  slave.  Where  once  it  was  felt  to  be  worth  while 
for  the  master  to  use  his  slave  well,  and  thus  secure 
his  services  as  long  as  possible,  it  began  to  be  thought 
more  profitable  to  use  him  up  with  hard  labor  in  a 
brief  time  and  replace  him  by  a  fresh  importation. 
Critics  have  vied  with  one  another  in  telling  us  that 
Mrs.  Stowe's  epoch-making  story  of  Uncle  Tom  gives 
no  true  picture  of  the  average  life  of  a  slave,  though 
it  detracts  little  from  the  merits  of  the  book  to  ad- 
mit, and  admit  gladly,  the  charge;  but  there  can  be 
little  question  that  the  course  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury saw  increasing  possibility  of  such  a  life  as  his. 
The  slave-trade,  once  looked  upon  with  aversion, 
was  now  tolerated  and  connived  at;  its  prohibition 
by  act  of  Congress  after  January  i,  1808,  was  worth 
little  more  than  the  paper  on  which  the  statute  was 
printed,  and  cargoes  of  African  negroes,  easily  evad- 
ing the  scandalously  slight  efforts  to  intercept  them, 
were  regularly  landed  on  the  coasts  of  the  southern 
States  until  the  Civil  War. 

During   the   struggle   with   England   and   France 

440 


ABOLITION    OF    SLAVERY 

which  ended  with  the  war  of  1812,  the  slavery  issue 
was,  for  the  most  part,  at  rest,  while  the  first  years 
of  peace  were  taken  up  with  commercial  and  finan- 
cial reorganization  and  with  negotiations  with  Spain 
for  the  acquisition  of  the  Floridas.  Suddenly  there 
burst  upon  the  country  the  controversy  whose  out- 
come was  the  Missouri  Compromise.  Maine  and 
Missouri  had  applied  for  admission  as  States,  and  to 
neither  was  there  particular  objection  on  the  score 
of  fitness.  There  could  be  no  question  but  that  Maine 
would  be  free.  Were  it  received  into  the  Union  alone, 
however,  its  Senators  'would  give  the  free  States  a 
majority  of  two  in  the  upper  house  of  Congress. 
As  the  number  of  members  from  the  free  States  in 
the  House  of  Representatives  had  from  the  beginning 
exceeded  the  number  of  those  from  the  slave  States 
— the  figures  in  1816  being  104  and  79  from  the  free 
and  slave  States  respectively — a  preponderance  of 
votes  in  the  Senate  also  would  put  the  control  of 
legislation  in  the  hands  of  those  who,  if  not  yet  open- 
ly hostile  to  slavery,  were  at  least  little  interested  in 
maintaining  it.  The  balance  could  be  maintained 
only  by  admitting  Missouri  with  slavery.  How  the 
struggle  ended  has  been  more  particularly  told  in  a 
previous  chapter.  Missouri  came  into  the  Union  a 
slave  State,  but  with  the  proviso  that  north  of  the 
parallel  360  30',  within  the  limits  of  the  Louisiana 
purchase,  no  more  slave  States  should  be  erected, 
and  with  the  further  fundamental  condition  that  the 
constitution  of  the  State,  which  among  other  things 
forbade  free  negroes  to  enter  the  State,  should  never 
be  so  interpreted  as  to  prejudice  the  rights  of  citizens 
of  the  United  States.  The  significance  of  the  Mis- 
souri Compromise  lay  in  the  fact  that  it  drew  a  geo- 
30  44 1 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

graphical  line  south  of  which  slavery  was  to  be  per- 
mitted without  Congressional  interference.  Not  un- 
til later  did  the  South  realize  that  it  had  got  the  small 
end  of  the  bargain,  and  that  the  territorial  aspect  of 
the  slavery  question  had  again  been  only  postponed. 
Then  fell  the  dull  calm  that  ushered  in  the  storm. 
Men  affected  to  believe  that  a  profound  sectional 
issue  had  been  forever  settled  by  the  simple  process 
of  drawing  a  line  on  the  map,  and  hastened  to  dis- 
miss the  unwelcome  subject  from  their  minds.  Cot- 
ton culture,  now  the  greatest  of  all  southern  indus- 
tries, grew  apace,  and  with  it  the  slavery  which  was 
thought  to  be  its  life.  The  population  of  Virginia, 
North  and  South  Carolina,  and  Georgia,  long  con- 
fined within  the  borders  of  those  States,  had  already 
passed  the  mountains  and  spread  itself  over  the  east- 
ern portion  of  the  rich  " black  belt"  of  Alabama  and 
Mississippi,  shortly  to  become  the  great  cotton-pro- 
ducing region  of  the  continent.  Thither  flowed,  for 
the  furnishing  of  this  patriarchal  society — a  patri- 
archal society  in  the  midst  of  an  industrial  com- 
munity—  the  corn,  bacon,  and  mules  of  the  West; 
for  the  lower  South  raised  only  cotton.  The  great 
planter,  with  his  numerous  slaves,  his  large  business 
operations,  his  seemingly  princely  wealth,  his  gen- 
erous hospitality,  and  his  chivalrous  bearing,  became 
to  Europeans  the  highest  type  of  American  gentle- 
man, while  the  West,  which  found  him  its  best  cus- 
tomer, and  the  East,  which  welcomed  his  sons  to  its 
colleges,  found  no  ground  for  quarrel  with  him.  In 
the  North,  meantime,  general  moral  concern  about 
slavery  waned.  Contributions  from  the  South  for 
the  support  of  missions  muffled  the  voice  of  the 
Churches,  and  the  Christian  religion  became,  for  the 

442 


ABOLITION    OF    SLAVERY 

slave,  only  the  pleasing  solace  of  servitude,  and  for 
the  slave-owner  its  theological  justification.  Whether 
the  slaves  were  treated  well  or  ill  now  mattered  little, 
for  conscience  was  dead.  The  American  Colonization 
Society,  founded  in  1816,  continued  to  nourish  the 
hope  of  the  transplantation  of  the  blacks  to  Africa, 
while  the  idea  of  ultimate  emancipation  —  usually, 
however,  in  some  distant  time — received  the  good- 
natured  assent  of  many  even  in  the  South;  but  few 
seriously  thought  of  change.  The  general  attitude 
of  the  country  was,  on  the  part  of  the  North,  ac- 
quiescence in  a  system  which,  remote  from  imme- 
diate observation,  was  apparently  satisfactory  to  those 
who  lived  under  it ;  and,  on  the  part  of  the  South,  an 
increased  disposition  to  regard  as  necessary  a  labor 
system  from  which  the  slave  States  were  obviously 
getting  rich. 

So  far  as  popular  interest  in  the  negro,  save  as  a 
wealth-producing  factor  of  indispensable  usefulness, 
was  concerned,  no  less  favorable  time  for  the  inau- 
guration of  an  abolition  movement  could  well  have 
been  chosen.  The  public  mind  was,  indeed,  much 
preoccupied.  The  election  of  Jackson  had  brought 
into  prominence  in  national  politics  the  aggressive 
young  democracy  of  the  West,  and  threatened  the 
overthrow  of  Eastern  influence  in  national  councils. 
The  Bank  of  the  United  States,  which  Jackson  had 
already  twice  attacked  in  his  annual  messages  of  1829 
and  1830,  was  girding  itself  for  the  fierce  and  relent- 
less war  with  the  President  in  which  it  was  to  meet 
its  death.  No  struggle  so  momentous  in  its  principles, 
or  so  far-reaching  in  its  probable  consequences  for 
the  financial  welfare  of  the  country,  had  as  yet  been 
even  hinted  at  in  the  United  States.     In  May,  1830, 

443 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

vetoes  of  bills  authorizing  subscriptions  by  the  United 
States  of  stock  in  two  principal  turnpike  companies 
had  given  notice  that  Jackson  was  not  to  be  de- 
pended upon  to  favor  internal  improvements  at  na- 
tional expense;  and  the  States,  encouraged  by  the 
example  of  New  York,  which  had  seen  the  completion 
of  the  Erie  Canal  in  1825,  were  left  to  develop  trans- 
portation routes  for  themselves.  In  South  Carolina 
the  "tariff  of  abominations"  of  1828,  raising  protec- 
tive duties  to  a  hitherto  unheard-of  point,  had  roused 
the  hostile  State-rights  feeling  which  was  shortly  to 
take  form  in  the  ordinance  of  nullification.  Here, 
surely,  was  matter  enough  to  occupy  the  thought  of 
a  people  already  engrossed  with  the  development  of 
a  country  whose  material  expansion  was  progressing 
by  leaps  and  bounds ;  here,  clearly,  was  powerful  ar- 
gument against  any  disturbance  of  an  economic  and 
social  situation  on  which  the  prosperity  of  one-half 
of  the  Union  apparently  depended,  and  whose  con- 
nection with  the  commercial  interests  of  the  other 
half  was  intimate  and  even  vital.  There  was  talk  of 
abolition,  of  course,  as  there  had  always  been,  but 
it  was  not  the  kind  of  talk  that  suggested  easy  trans- 
lation into  terms  of  action. 

It  is  by  neither  accident  nor  injustice  that  the 
abolition  movement  in  the  United  States  is  asso- 
ciated inseparably  with  the  name  of  William  Lloyd 
Garrison;  for  while  there  were  earnest  abolitionists 
before  him,  and  not  all  who  worked  with  him  agreed 
fully  with  him,  he  nevertheless  stands  pre-eminent 
among  the  men  and  women  who  boldly  denounced 
slavery  as  a  moral  wrong  and  a  national  disgrace, 
and  who  pressed  on  the  agitation  which,  in  little 
more  than  a  generation,  was  to  topple  the  institution 

444 


ABOLITION    OF    SLAVERY 

to  its  fall.  Garrison  was  born  in  Newburyport, 
Massachusetts,  in  1805.  Learning  the  trade  of  print- 
er, and  practising  both  printing  and  newspaper  edit- 
ing in  Boston  and  Bennington,  Vermont,  he  went  to 
Baltimore  in  1829  to  take  charge  of  the  Genius  of 
Universal  Emancipation,  a  paper  published  by  Ben- 
jamin Lundy.  Lundy  was  a  Quaker  who  had  con- 
trived so  to  advocate  the  ultimate  emancipation  of 
the  slaves  as  not  only  to  avoid  offending  the  South, 
but  even  to  win  support,  moral  and  financial,  from 
slave-owners.  Garrison,  in  a  Fourth-of-July  speech 
in  Park  Street  Church,  Boston,  had  already  assented 
to  the  doctrine  of  gradual  emancipation,  but  the 
publication  in  the  Genius  of  his  frank  recantation, 
together  with  a  demand  for  immediate  and  complete 
emancipation,  placed  him  on  the  ground  on  which 
he  was  thereafter  to  stand.  The  new  policy,  how- 
ever, so  alienated  public  support  and  incensed  pub- 
lic opinion  in  Baltimore  that  in  six  months  the  part- 
nership had  to  be  abandoned,  while  the  outspoken 
editor  had  also  to  undergo  a  short  term  of  imprison- 
ment for  violation  of  a  Maryland  statute.  After  an 
unsuccessful  attempt  to  establish  a  paper  in  Wash- 
ington, Garrison  returned  to  Boston,  and  on  January 
1,  1 83 1,  issued  the  first  number  of  the  Liberator. 
The  opening  address  to  the  public  was  as  ominous  as 
it  was  characteristic: 

14 1  will  be  as  harsh  as  truth,  and  as  uncompromising  as 
justice.  On  this  subject,  I  do  not  wish  to  think,  or  speak,  or 
write,  with  moderation.  ...  I  am  in  earnest — I  will  not 
equivocate — I  will  not  excuse — I  will  not  retreat  a  single  inch 
— and  I  will  be  heard.  The  apathy  of  the  people  is  enough 
to  make  every  statue  leap  from  its  pedestal,  and  to  hasten 
the  resurrection  of  the  dead." 

445 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Of  fine  presence,  self  -  controlled,  with  well-bred 
manners;  usually  quiet  in  speech,  yet  capable  of 
great  vehemence  when  needful,  Garrison  was  in  spirit 
and  method  one  to  be  classed  as  an  extremist.  He 
had  clearness  of  perception  rather  than  breadth  of 
vision.  With  the  economic  aspects  of  slavery  he 
never  particularly  concerned  himself.  He  had  no 
sympathy  with  the  attitude  of  compromise  and  ad- 
justment in  which  political  leaders  so  often  approach 
the  solution  of  great  questions ;  all  questions  were  to 
him  absolute.  He  unquestionably  magnified  his  own 
importance  and  minimized  the  work  of  others;  and 
he  certainly  alienated  for  the  moment  the  mass  of 
influential  people  in  the  North,  while  his  radical  views 
on  other  questions  than  slavery  left  him  for  many 
years  under  a  cloud  of  suspicion  and  distrust.  Yet  it 
may  well  be  doubted  if  a  man  of  less  concentrated 
and  intense  nature  could  have  roused  public  opinion, 
or  broken  down  the  wall  of  vested  interests  with 
which  the  institution  of  slavery  was  surrounded. 
What  Garrison  saw,  and  saw  with  undimmed  clear- 
ness, was  the  moral  wrong  of  slavery;  and  to  a  mind 
which,  like  his,  had  been  trained  under  the  awful 
system  of  theology  which  New  England  had  not  yet 
repudiated,  questions  of  right  and  wrong  admitted 
of  no  compromise  and  predominated  over  every 
other  consideration.  It  was  well  that  the  moral  is- 
sue should  be  thus  aggressively  defined,  since  it  was 
upon  that  issue  that  the  battle  was  soon  to  be  joined ; 
but  the  constitutional  position  of  the  abolition  leader 
was  not  always,  in  the  public  eye,  free  from  doubt. 
A  heated  denunciation  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  as  "a  covenant  with  death  and  an 
agreement  with  hell"  laid  Garrison  open  to  the  charge 

446 


ABOLITION    OF    SLAVERY 

of  advocating  the  abolition  of  slavery  by  unconsti- 
tutional means.  The  charge  rests  upon  a  radical 
misconception  of  Garrison's  position.  Vigorous  as 
was  his  denunciation  of  compromise,  and  of  legisla- 
tion which,  though  constitutional,  he  held  to  be  mor- 
ally wrong;  willing  as  he  eventually  seemed  to  be 
that  the  Union  should  perish  rather  than  that  sla- 
very should  continue  to  receive  national  protection, 
he  nevertheless  advocated  no  unconstitutional  pro- 
gramme, as  he  understood  the  Constitution,  preached 
no  disloyalty,  fomented  no  treason.  It  was  for  Sew- 
ard later  to  proclaim  the  doctrine  of  the  "higher 
law,"  by  which  all  constitutions  and  laws  of  hu- 
man making  must  stand  or  fall,  but  the  doctrine 
was  Garrison's  before  it  was  Seward's.  It  was 
the  work  of  the  abolitionists  to  drive  into  the 
Union,  with  hard  and  unsparing  blows,  a  wedge  of 
moral  conviction,  and  therewith  to  divide  the  na- 
tion, not,  happily,  to  its  permanent  undoing,  but 
to  the  end  that  the  United  States  might  be, 
in  fact  as  well  as  in  word,  a  "more  perfect" 
Union. 

Garrison's  views  were  first  systematically  indicated 
in  his  Thoughts  on  African  Colonization,  published  in 
1832.  In  this  work  he  attacked  the  American  Col- 
onization Society,  organized  in  181 6,  on  the  ground 
that  it  was  pledged  not  to  oppose  the  system  of 
slavery,  but  apologized  for  slavery  and  the  slave- 
holders; that  it  recognized  slaves  as  property  and 
increased  their  value  by  every  deportation;  that  it 
was  the  enemy  of  immediate  emancipation,  aimed  at 
the  utter  expulsion  of  the  blacks,  and  denied  the 
possibility  of  elevating  the  blacks  in  this  country; 
and,  finally,  that  it  was  nourished  by  fear  and  self- 

447 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

ishness,  and  deceived  and  misled  the  nation.1  The 
mass  of  facts  with  which  the  indictment  was  sustained 
made  the  book  a  favorite  arsenal  of  weapons  for  anti- 
slavery  speakers  and  writers.  From  the  attack  thus 
begun,  Garrison  did  not  desist  until,  in  this  country 
and  England,  the  whole  scheme  of  negro  deportation 
had  been  abandoned  in  favor  of  emancipation. 

The  same  year  in  which  the  Thoughts  appeared 
saw  the  formation  of  the  New  England  Antislavery 
Society,  followed  in  December,  1833,  by  the  organiza- 
tion, at  Philadelphia,  of  the  American  Antislavery 
Society.  The  constitution  of  the  national  society  de- 
manded immediate  abolition  by  the  States  and  the 
federal  government,  but  opposed  all  violent  or  un- 
constitutional measures,  and  expressly  declared 
against  slave  insurrections.  The  latter  declaration 
was  particularly  significant  in  view  of  the  charge, 
wholly  without  foundation,  that  the  abolitionists  two 
years  before  had  stirred  up  the  Nat  Turner  insur- 
rection in  Southampton  County,  Virginia,  in  which 
some  sixty  white  persons  had  been  killed.  The  for- 
mation of  local  societies  went  on  apace,  each  society 
becoming  the  centre  of  an  active  propaganda  through 
public  meetings,  private  discussions,  and  the  circula- 
tion of  abolition  books,  pamphlets,  and  newspapers. 
From  England,  in  1834,  came  George  Thompson  to 
aid  in  the  work,  and 'in  1840  the  American  and  For- 
eign Antislavery  Society  was  formed  for  internation- 
al agitation.  Great  Britain  had  already,  in  1833, 
abolished  slavery  throughout  the  empire,  and  a 
papal  bull  had  arrayed  against  the  institution  the 
opposition  of  the  Church. 

Johnson,  Garrison,  114,  115. 
448 


ABOLITION    OF    SLAVERY 

But  the  organized  attack  on  slavery  was  not  to  go 
on  without  encountering  stubborn  and  violent  re- 
sistance. The  radical  utterances  of  Garrison  cut  to 
the  quick,  and  before  long  provoked  riotous  response. 
Prudence  Crandall,  a  Quakeress,  head  of  a  school  for 
young  ladies  at  Canterbury,  Connecticut,  admitted 
colored  pupils,  in  consequence  of  which  the  State  of 
Connecticut  forbade  by  statute  the  opening  of  schools 
for  colored  persons  without  the  consent  of  the  town 
authorities,  while  Miss  Crandall  herself  was  shame- 
fully persecuted  by  her  neighbors,  imprisoned,  and 
her  school  broken  up.  There  were  riots  in  New  York 
City  in  1834,  in  Boston  and  Utica  in  1835.  In  Boston 
a  mob  dragged  Garrison  through  the  streets  with  a 
rope  around  his  waist,  until  the  mayor  lodged  him  in 
jail  for  safety.  At  Canaan,  New  Hampshire,  the 
building  of  Noyes  Academy,  where  white  and  negro 
pupils  were  received,  was  ''removed"  by  vote  of  the 
town-meeting,  a  hundred  yoke  of  oxen  dragging  the 
building  from  its  foundations  to  the  neighboring  town 
common.1  In  December,  1837,  Rev.  Elijah  P.  Love- 
joy,  editor  of  an  anti slavery  religious  newspaper  at 
Alton,  Illinois,  was  murdered  by  a  mob.  The  trag- 
edy called  out,  in  Faneuil  Hall,  Boston,  the  first  pub- 
lic speech  of  Wendell  Phillips,  whose  burning  elo- 
quence was  thenceforward  a  powerful  aid  to  the 
abolition  cause.  At  Bowdoin  College  a  covert  at- 
tempt on  the  part  of  the  trustees  to  remove  the  pro- 
fessor of  mathematics,  suspected  of  abolition  lean- 
ings, was  frustrated  only  by  the  devotion  of  the 
students,  who  presented  to  the  examining  committee 
such  unassailable  proof  of  proficiency  that  the  charge 

1  Garrison's  Garrison,  I.,  494. 
449 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

of  incompetency,  which  the  trustees  had  alone  dared 
to  urge,  could  not  be  sustained.  In  hardly  any  com- 
munity in  the  North  could  abolition  sentiments  be 
expressed  without  fear  of  social,  business,  or  religious 
ostracism,  and  not  seldom  of  violence  to  person  or 
property. 

The  first  effects  of  the  abolition  movement  in  the 
South  were  seen  in  increased  severity  towards  the 
slaves,  and  demands  that  the  northern  States  sup- 
press the  agitation  and,  if  necessary,  muzzle  the 
press.  A  Georgia  statute  of  1831  offered  a  reward  of 
five  thousand  dollars  for  the  apprehension  and  con- 
viction, under  the  law  of  the  State,  of  Garrison  or 
any  person  circulating  copies  of  the  Liberator.  The 
action  of  the  abolitionists  in  sending  their  literature 
to  the  South  roused  intense  opposition,  though  it  was 
not  clear  that  negroes  who  could  not  read  were  likely 
to  be  much  affected  by  newspapers  and  books;  and 
there  was  a  demand  for  the  exclusion  of  such  publica- 
tions from  the  mails.  As  early  as  October,  1831,  free 
persons  of  color  in  Georgetown,  District  of  Columbia, 
had  been  forbidden  by  statute  to  take  the  Liberator 
from  the  post-office,  under  pain  of  twenty  dollars'  fine 
or  thirty  days'  imprisonment.  In  July,  1835,  the  mails 
at  Charleston  were  rifled  and  a  quantity  of  abolition 
documents  destroyed.  The  postmaster  at  New  York, 
acting  on  the  suggestion  of  the  postmaster  at  Charles- 
ton, refused  to  forward  abolition  matter,  and  was 
upheld  in  his  action  by  the  Postmaster-general,  Amos 
Kendall.  In  his  annual  message  of  the  following 
December,  Jackson,  evidently  ignorant  of  the  char- 
acter of  the  literature  he  was  denouncing,  urged  upon 
Congress  "  the  propriety  of' passing  such  a  law  as  will 
prohibit,   under  severe  penalties,   the  circulation   in 

45° 


ABOLITION    OF    SLAVERY 

the  southern  States,  through  the  mail,  of  incendiary 
publications  intended  to  instigate  the  slaves  to  insur- 
rection"; but  an  attempt  in  the  Senate,  by  a  com- 
mittee of  which  Calhoun  was  chairman,  to  fasten  upon 
the  post-office  appropriation  bill  of  1836  a  provision 
authorizing  postmasters  to  detain  suspected  matter, 
fortunately  failed. 

The  inherent  antagonism  between  slavery  and  free 
thought  was  shown  far  more  seriously,  however,  in 
the  temporary  denial  by  Congress  of  the  right  of 
petition.  In  furtherance  of  their  constitutional  agi- 
tation, the  abolitionists,  following  an  example  set 
by  the  Quakers  almost  from  the  organization  of  the 
government,  had  begun  systematically  to  petition 
Congress  to  abolish  slavery  in  the  District  of  Colum- 
bia, and  in  other  places  over  which  the  federal  gov- 
ernment had  exclusive  jurisdiction.  The  anger  and 
irritation  of  southern  members  increased  with  the 
rising  volume  of  memorial  and  request.  The  right 
to  petition  the  government  for  a  redress  of  grievances 
is  justly  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  precious  privi- 
leges of  the  citizen,  and  the  denial  of  the  right  a 
serious  encroachment  upon  political  liberty.  May 
25,  1836,  however,  the  House  of  Representatives, 
after  declaring  that  Congress  possessed  no  consti- 
tutional authority  to  interfere  with  slavery  in  any 
State,  and  that  slavery  ought  not  to  be  abolished  in 
the  District  of  Columbia,  voted  "that  all  petitions, 
memorials,  propositions,  or  papers,  relating  in  any 
way,  or  to  any  extent  whatever,  to  the  subject  of 
slavery,  shall,  without  being  printed  or  referred,  be 
laid  upon  the  table,  and  that  no  further  action  what- 
ever shall  be  had  thereon."  In  January,  1840,  a 
rule  of  the  House  declared  that   no    such  petition 

451 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

should  be  received,  "or  entertained  in  any  way 
whatever." 

Against  this  arbitrary  action  John  Quincy  Adams, 
who,  after  his  not  altogether  successful  administra- 
tion as  President,  had  begun,  in  1831,  a  brilliant 
career  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  vigorously 
protested.  Adams  owed  his  support  at  home  in  part 
to  the  abolitionists,  with  whose  main  purposes  he 
was  now  in  practical  accord,  and  he  refused  to  abate 
this  agitation  until,  in  1844,  the  " gag-rule"  was  re- 
pealed. Rarely  has  the  atmosphere  of  the  House 
been  more  charged  with  passion  and  hate  than  during 
the  years  when  Adams  was  waging  his  splendid  fight 
for  free  speech  and  free  thought.  Petitions  for  his 
expulsion  and  threats  of  personal  violence  did  not 
intimidate  him.  In  February,  1837,  there  was  talk 
of  censuring  him  for  presenting  a  petition  signed  by 
slaves,  and  the  anger  of  the  House  was  only  increased 
when  it  finally  came  out  that  the  prayer  of  the  peti- 
tioners was  against  abolition,  not  in  favor  of  it.  An 
attempt  to  expel  Adams,  in  1842,  happily  failed. 
Joshua  R.  Giddings,  of  Ohio,  who  ably  seconded 
Adams's  efforts,  was  censured  by  the  House  for  his 
conduct,  resigned  his  seat,  was  triumphantly  re- 
elected by  his  constituents,  and  shortly  returned  with 
an  endorsement  which  even  the  angry  and  excited 
House  dared  not  disregard. 

A  recent  historian,  whose  attitude  towards  the 
early  abolition  agitation  is  far  from  friendly,  gives 
it  as  his  opinion  that  "  the  whole  course  of  the  internal 
history  of  the  United  States  from  1836  to  1861  was 
more  largely  determined  by  the  struggle  in  Congress 
over  the  abolition  petitions  and  the  use  of  the  mails 
for  the  distribution  of  the  abolition  literature  than 

452 


ABOLITION    OF    SLAVERY 

by  anything  else."1  The  demand  for  immediate 
emancipation,  indeed,  had  put  slavery  on  the  de- 
fensive, and  while  the  North  was  slow  in  rousing, 
the  extreme  claims  of  southern  leaders  in  Congress, 
revealing  as  they  did  an  evident  determination  to 
suppress  all  discussion  on  the  subject,  were  themselves 
a  confession  of  weakness.  The  federal  administra- 
tion, however,  was  largely  in  the  hands  of  able  men 
from  the  southern  States,  as  it  had  been  for  most 
of  the  years  since  1789;  and  whether  slavery  was  an 
evil  or  a  good,  it  was  not  likely  to  be  either  over- 
thrown or  seriously  restricted  without  prolonged  re- 
sistance. 

In  1840  the  abolitionists  were  for  the  first  time 
able  to  put  a  Presidential  ticket  in  the  field,  though 
the  decision  so  to  do  made  a  permanent  breach  in  the 
abolition  ranks,  a  large  number,  including  Garrison, 
holding  the  formation  of  a  third  party  to  be  inex- 
pedient. The  Democratic  platform  of  1840  denied 
the  right  of  Congress  to  interfere  with  the  domestic 
institutions  of  any  State,  and  denounced  the  aboli- 
tion agitation  as  "calculated  to  lead  to  the  most 
alarming  and  dangerous  consequences"  and  to  "en- 
danger the  stability  and  permanency  of  the  Union." 
The  Whigs  were  not  yet  prepared  to  take  issue  with 
the  Democrats  on  this  point.  The  abolition  con- 
vention in  December,  1839,  held  at  Warsaw,  New 
York,  nominated  James  G.  Birney,  of  New  York,  for 
President,  and  Thomas  Earle,  of  Pennsylvania,  for 
Vice-president.  Birney  had  been  an  Alabama  slave- 
holder, but  had  been  converted  to  abolition  through 
belief  in  colonization  and  gradual  emancipation.     In 

1  Burgess,  Middle  Period,  274. 
453 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  election  of  1840  these  candidates  polled  but  7069 
votes  in  a  total  vote  of  2,411,187;  but  the  day  of 
greater  things  was  at  hand.  Until  the  Thirteenth 
Amendment  had  abolished  slavery,  the  question  of 
abolition  was  destined  not  to  be  absent  from  any 
Presidential  campaign.  It  remained  to  be  seen 
whether,  under  the  stress  of  practical  politics,  the 
agitation  could  be  kept  free  from  dangerous  entangle- 
ments, or  could  accept  the  temporary  expedients 
which  are  a  necessary  accompaniment  of  every  great 
reform. 


XX 

TERRITORIAL    SLAVERY 

JACKSON'S  choice  of  a  successor  fell  upon  his 
Vice-president,  Martin  Van  Buren.  As  Secretary 
of  State  and  Vice-president,  Van  Buren  had  had  ex- 
perience in  national  administration,  while  his  earlier 
membership  in  the  political  group  known  as  the 
"Albany  Regency"  had  given  him  an  acquaintance 
with  "practical  politics"  such  as  few  men  of  his 
generation  possessed.  Born  of  an  old  New  York 
family,  bred  to  wealth  and  social  position,  he  was  in 
striking  contrast  to  the  rough-and-ready  champion 
of  democracy  who  now  pressed  his  candidacy  to  a 
successful  issue.  Yet  his  path  to  the  Presidency  was 
strewn  with  difficulties.  Van  Buren,  though  Secretary 
of  State,  was  well  known  to  have  been  also  intimate 
with  the  so-called  k'itchen  cabinet  to  which  Jackson, 
in  his  first  administration,  had  given  his  confidence; 
and  when,  in  1831,  following  Calhoun's  attack  upon 
Jackson  for  the  latter's  course  in  the  Seminole  war, 
there  came  the  break-up  of  the  cabinet,  the  nomina- 
tion of  Van  Buren  to  be  Minister  to  Great  Britain 
was  rejected  by  the  Senate.  The  rejection  was  the 
more  humiliating  because  achieved  by  the  casting 
vote  of  Calhoun,  then  Vice-president,  and  because 
Van  Buren,  confident  of  his  confirmation,  had  al- 
ready presented  his  credentials  at  the  court  of  St. 

455 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

James.  In  January,  1835,  the  legislature  of  Jackson's 
own  State,  Tennessee,  though  well  aware  of  Jackson's 
wishes,  had  nominated  Senator  Hugh  L.  White,  of 
that  State,  for  President,  and  the  nomination  was 
shortly  seconded  by  the  legislature  of  Alabama. 

The  campaign  which  followed  profited  more  by  the 
dissensions  and  weakness  of  the  opposition  than  by 
the  strength  of  Van  Buren.  The  Whig  party,  or- 
ganized in  1834,  was  an  unfused  aggregation  of  Nat- 
ional Republicans,  moderate  State-rights  men  or 
Nullifiers,  Anti-Masons,  and  "Jackson  men  "  who  re- 
sented what  they  held  to  be  the  usurpation  of  ex- 
ecutive authority  by  the  President.  The  members 
of  this  party  generally  supported  William  Henry 
Harrison,  of  Ohio,  the  nominee  of  an  Anti-Masonic 
convention  at  Harrisburg,  Pennsylvania.  The  leg- 
islature of  Ohio  nominated  Judge  John  McLean,  of 
that  State,  and  the  Massachusetts  Whigs  presented 
Webster,  who,  it  was  thought,  would  carry  New  Eng- 
land. There  were  certainly  candidates  enough,  and 
to  spare.  The  Democratic  party,  on  the  other  hand, 
had  the  better  organization,  and  made  the  most  of 
the  popular  opposition  to  the  bank  of  the  United 
States,  with  whose  support  the  majority  of  the  Whigs 
were  identified.  The  Democratic  convention,  held 
in  Baltimore  in  May,  1835  —  more  than  seventeen 
months  before  the  election — cast  a  unanimous  vote 
for  Van  Buren.  In  the  election  Van  Buren  received 
170  electoral  votes  against  73  for  Harrison,  his  prin- 
cipal competitor.  The  popular  vote,  however,  show- 
ed no  such  overwhelming  majority,  the  vote  for  Van 
Buren  being  762,987,  against  736,250  for  the  com- 
bined Whig  opposition.  Neither  candidate  for  Vice- 
president  received  a  majority  of  the  electoral  votes, 

456 


TERRITORIAL    SLAVERY 

and  for  the  first  and  only  time  in  our  history  the 
choice  devolved  upon  the  Senate,  in  accordance  with 
the  provisions  of  the  Constitution.  By  a  vote  of  33 
to  16,  the  Senate  chose  Richard  M.  Johnson,  of  Ken- 
tucky, the  Democratic  candidate. 

"I  leave  this  great  people  prosperous  and  happy," 
wrote  Jackson,  in  a  farewell  address ;  and  Van  Buren's 
inaugural  echoed  the  words.  Both  were  deceived. 
Van  Buren  professed  to  be  the  legitimate  successor 
of  Jackson,  and  aimed  to  make  his  administration  a 
logical  continuation  of  that  of  his  great  predecessor. 
He  took  over  five  of  the  six  members  of  Jackson's 
cabinet,  retaining  two  of  them  throughout  his  term. 
But  the  disastrous  financial  crisis  which  began  when 
the  administration  was  little  more  than  two  months 
old  was  also  an  inheritance;  for  while  Van  Buren, 
in  accordance  with  the  political  custom  of  all  coun- 
tries, got  the  blame  for  all  the  evils  that  befell  the 
country  during  his  term  of  office,  the  most  patent 
cause  of  the  panic  was  to  be  found  in  the  commercial 
and  financial  disorder  wrought  by  Jackson's  war  on 
the  bank  and  the  drastic  specie  circular  of  July,  1836. 
To  these  causes  were  also  to  be  added  speculative 
fever,  a  heavy  excess  of  imports  over  exports,  the 
failure  of  banks  and  commercial  houses  in  Great 
Britain,  and  bad  crops  at  home.  In  March,  1837,  it 
was  reported  that  "the  value  of  real  estate  in  New 
York  had  in  six  months  depreciated  more  than  $40,- 
000,000;  in  two  months  there  had  been  more  than 
two  hundred  and  fifty  failures;  there  had  been  a 
decline  of  $20,000,000  in  the  value  of  the  stocks  of 
railroads  and  canals  which  centred  iri  New  York ;  the 
value  of  merchandise  in  warehouses  had  fallen  thirty 
per  cent.,  and  within  a  few  weeks  20,000  persons  had 
30  457 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

been  discharged  by  their  employers."  l  On  May  ioth 
the  New  York  banks  suspended  specie  payment.  Van 
Buren,  though  urged  to  rescind  the  specie  circular, 
refused  to  interfere,  wisely  concluding  that  the  panic 
had  best  run  its  course.  An  issue  of  Treasury  notes 
in  October,  the  work  of  a  special  session  of  Congress, 
afforded  a  little  relief,  but  it  was  not  until  the  latter 
part  of  1838  that  specie  payment  was  generally  re- 
sumed. 

Of  the  political  questions  which  came  to  the  front 
during  Van  Buren 's  administration,  the  most  impor- 
tant, so  far  as  its  national  consequences  were  con- 
cerned, was  the  proposed  annexation  of  Texas.  The 
revolts  of  the  Spanish  colonies  in  America  against 
the  Bourbon  dynasty  in  Spain  began  in  1808,  and 
were  renewed  in  1819  with  such  success  that  when, 
in  December,  1823,  the  Monroe  doctrine  was  pro- 
claimed, every  main-land  colony  in  Central  and  South 
America  had  achieved  independence.  Mexico,  which 
had  revolted  in  1821,  adopted  three  years  later  a 
federal  form  of  government.  In  1827  the  states  of 
Texas  and  Coahuila  were  united  under  a  constitution 
which  prohibited  the  further  importation  of  slaves, 
and  provided  for  the  gradual  emancipation  of  slaves 
already  in  the  country.  Two  years  later  Mexico 
itself  abolished  slavery. 

Texas  was  a  vast  area.  It  was  large  enough  to 
make  five  States  of  the  size  of  Alabama,  six  of  the 
size  of  Pennsylvania.  In  its  northern  portion  the 
fertile  black  belt  reached  its  greatest  extent.  More- 
over, the  State  lay  south  of  the  parallel  of  latitude 
which,  since  the  compromise  of  1820,  had  been  re- 

1  Dewey,  Financial  History  of  the  United  States,  231. 
458 


TERRITORIAL    SLAVERY 

garded  as  the  dividing  line  between  free  States  and 
slave.  Naturally,  therefore,  the  demand  arose  for 
the  annexation  of  Texas  to  the  United  States,  a  de- 
mand which  gathered  additional  force  from  the  im- 
pression, which  with  many  easily  became  a  convic- 
tion, that  John  Quincy  Adams,  in  negotiating  with 
Spain  the  Florida  treaty  of  1819,  had  sacrificed  a 
valid  claim  of  the  United  States  to  part  of  the  region 
beyond  the  Sabine  River.  Attempts  to  purchase 
Texas,  however,  in  1827,  and  again  in  1829,  failed, 
and  by  a  treaty,  made  in  1828,  but  not  ratified  until 
1832,  the  boundary  fixed  by  the  treaty  of  1819  was 
confirmed.  Meantime,  an  appreciable  migration  into 
Texas,  principally  from  the  southern  States,  had  set 
in,  and  in  1833  a  new  constitution,  framed  under 
American  influence,  was  adopted.  When,  then,  in 
1835,  the  President  of  Mexico,  Santa  Anna,  undertook 
to  replace  the  federal  government  of  Mexico  by  a 
centralized  system,  which  transformed  the  States 
into  provinces,  Texas  resisted,  defeated  the  Mexican 
forces  at  the  battle  of  San  Jacinto,  and  declared  itself 
independent  under  a  constitution  which  established 
slavery. 

To  the  Americans  in  Texas,  independence  was  only 
a  first  step  towards  union  with  the  United  States. 
But  there  were  difficulties  in  the  way.  The  indepen- 
dence of  Texas,  indeed,  was  promptly  recognized,  but 
annexation  was  for  the  present  declined.  The  vast 
size  of  the  new  State  would,  it  was  feared,  make  its 
acquisition  too  much  of  a  concession  to  slavery,  es- 
pecially now  that  the  abolition  agitation  was  forcing 
the  question  of  slavery  harshly  to  the  front.  The 
doctrine  of  a  balance  of  power  between  the  North 
and  the  South,  embodied  in  the  Missouri  Compro- 

459 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

mise,  still  held  sway  and  might  not  lightly  be  ignored. 
Yet  the  suggestion  of  annexation  could  not  at  once 
be  put  aside.  In  December,  1836,  and  again  in 
August,  1837,  Texas  applied  for  admission,  but  each 
time  without  success.  There  was  certainly  ground 
for  hoping  that  the  application  would  be  favorably 
considered,  for  the  United  States  had  notoriously 
neglected  its  duties  as  a  neutral  in  allowing  recruits 
for  the  Texan  army  to  be  openly  enlisted  within  its 
borders,  and  had  sent  its  own  troops,  under  General 
Gaines,  into  Texas  with  only  the  shadowy  pretext 
of  guarding  against  a  threatened  Indian  outbreak. 
The  firm  attitude  of  John  Quincy  Adams  defeated 
annexation  for  the  time  being.  In  a  speech  in  June, 
1838,  on  a  resolution  submitted  in  the  House,  Adams 
declared  that  the  annexation  of  the  people  of  an  in- 
dependent foreign  state  by  act  of  Congress  would  be, 
in  his  opinion,  a  usurpation  of  power  "  which  it  would 
be  right  and  the  duty  of  the  free  people  of  the  Union 
to  resist  and  annul."  For  three  weeks  Adams  rang 
the  changes  on  this  theme  until  the  country  was 
thoroughly  aroused  and  the  proposed  incorporation 
of  Texas  defeated. 

There  was  no  further  agitation  of  the  question  in 
Congress  during  Van  Buren's  term.  The  Democrats, 
notwithstanding  their  superior  organization  and  more 
definite  principles,  were  losing  ground.  The  Con- 
gressional elections  of  1837  and  1838  went  against 
them;  by  1839  they  had  nearly  lost  the  control  of 
the  House ;  and  the  election  of  1 840  completed  their 
overthrow.  Against  Van  Buren  and  all  his  works 
the  Whigs  were  now  prepared  to  fight  with  united 
strength,  provided  they  could  agree  upon  a  suitable 
leader.     The  most  conspicuous  candidate,   whether 

460 


DANIEL    WEBSTER 
[From  the  painting  by  G.  P.  A.  Healy,  now  in  Faneuil  Hall,  Boston] 


TERRITORIAL    SLAVERY 

in  ability  or  in  public  service,  was  Henry  Clay,  his 
fame  as  yet  undimmed  by  skilful  practice  of  com- 
promise. Clay,  however,  was  a  protectionist,  and  as 
such  objectionable  to  the  South,  while  his  member- 
ship in  the  order  of  Free  Masons  antagonized  the 
anti-masonic  sentiment,  which  was  still  strong  in  the 
East.  For  the  welfare  of  his  party,  therefore,  he 
wisely  decided  not  to  press  his  candidacy.  His  only 
competitor  was  William  Henry  Harrison,  whose  pub- 
lic life,  if  not  distinguished,  had  been  at  least  credit- 
able, and  who  had  neither  principles  nor  record  that 
needed  to  be  explained.  He  had  been  a  soldier,  had 
made  a  strong  canvass  in  1836,  and  could  command 
the  vote  of  the  West.  Harrison,  accordingly,  re- 
ceived the  nomination.  The  candidate  for  Vice- 
president  was  John  Tyler,  of  Virginia,  an  able,  dis- 
tinguished, high-minded  Democrat,  who  had  come 
to  believe  himself  a  Whig.  No  platform  or  declara- 
tion of  principles  was  thought  necessary;  the  party 
creed  was  sufficiently  summed  up  in  opposition  to 
Van  Buren  and  to  the  "  Loco-focos,"  as  the  Democrats 
were  popularly  called. 

The  Democrats,  apparently  as  confident  as  ever 
of  victory,  unanimously  nominated  Van  Buren  for  a 
second  term.  They  were  unable,  however,  to  agree 
on  a  candidate  for  Vice-president,  and  left  that  of- 
fice to  be  filled  by  the  independent  action  of  the 
States.  The  platform  took  firm  ground  against  in- 
ternal improvements,  protection,  and  a  United  States 
bank,  and  denounced  the  abolitionists.  The  cam- 
paign was  unlike  anything  the  country  had  yet 
known.  For  the  Whigs  it  was  log-cabins  and  hard 
cider,  " Tippecanoe  and  Tyler,  too,"  bands,  parades, 
and  vast  public  meetings.     General  Harrison  himself 

461 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

was  persuaded  to  "take  the  stump"  in  Ohio.  It 
was  a  campaign  of  noise  and  enthusiasm,  not  of  prin- 
ciples, and  against  the  swelling  tide  of  popular  ex- 
citement the  Democrats  could  make  no  headway. 
Harrison  carried  nineteen  of  the  twenty-six  States, 
receiving  234  electoral  votes  to  60  for  his  opponent; 
and  there  was  also  a  Whig  majority  in  both  houses 
of  Congress.  The  popular  vote  for  President,  how- 
ever, showed  no  large  majority,  the  vote  being  1,275,- 
016  for  Harrison  and  1,129,102  for  Van  Buren.  In 
most  of  the  States  the  vote  was  close. 

So  far  as  the  popular  vote  went  the  election  of 
1840  indicated  no  radical  change  of  public  opinion, 
no  emphatic  demand  for  a  change  in  national  policy. 
The  Whigs,  though  they  had  fought  a  successful 
campaign  with  a  popular  candidate,  had  had  no  plat- 
form, and  were  of  too  mixed  a  complexion  to  have 
as  yet  a  well-defined  party  policy;  and  the  sudden 
death  of  President  Harrison  a  month  after  his  in- 
auguration threw  the  executive  administration  into 
the  hands  of  a  man  whose  Whig  principles  implied 
nothing  more  than  a  refusal  to  accept  all  parts  of  the 
Democratic  programme.  Trouble  was  not  long  in  ap- 
pearing. As  the  result  of  persistent  effort  through- 
out nearly  the  whole  of  Van  Buren's  term,  an  act  had 
been  passed  in  1840  establishing  an  independent 
treasury  system,  under  which  the  federal  govern- 
ment cared  for  the  national  moneys  without  the 
agency  of  a  bank.  That  act  was  now  promptly  re- 
pealed, and  a  bill  for  a  national  bank — a  cardinal 
point  in  the  Whig  policy— was  brought  in  and  passed. 
To  the  amazement  of  the  Whigs,  Tyler  vetoed  the 
bill.  In  the  time  of  Jackson's  ascendency  he  had 
opposed  on  principle   the  recharter  of  the  Bank  of 

462 


TERRITORIAL    SLAVERY 

the  United  States,  and  now  that  he  himself  as  Presi- 
dent was  confronted  with  essentially  the  same  propo- 
sition, his  constitutional  scruples  did  not  desert  him. 
A  second  bill,  prepared,  it  was  supposed,  in  harmony 
with  his  views,  was  also  vetoed.  Thereupon  the 
Whig  leaders  in  Congress  issued  a  statement  declar- 
ing that  "  those  who  brought  the  President  into  pow- 
er can  be  no  longer,  in  any  manner  or  degree,  justly 
held  responsible  or  blamed  for  the  administration  of 
the  executive  branch  of  the  government ";  the  cabi- 
net, with  the  exception  of  Webster,  the  Secretary  of 
State,  resigned,  and  Tyler  thenceforth  stood  alone. 

No  provision  was  made  until  1 846  for  the  care  and 
management  of  government  money,  save  as  the  Sec- 
retary of  the  Treasury  directed.  Only  one  substan- 
tial part  of  the  hastily  constructed  Whig  programme 
was  saved.  The  tariff  of  1 842 ,  replacing  with  increased 
rates  the  twenty  per  cent!  duty  provided  for  under 
the  compromise  tariff  of  1833,  received  executive  ap- 
proval, though  only  after  the  failure  of  two  attempts 
to  couple  with  it  a  scheme  for  the  distribution  of  the 
surplus  revenue  among  the  States. 

The  most  important  diplomatic  success  of  Tyler's 
administration  was  the  conclusion,  in  August,  1842, 
of  a  treaty  with  Great  Britain — known  as  the  Ash- 
burton  treaty — bringing  to  a  close  the  long-standing 
controversy  over  the  northeastern  boundary  of  the 
United  States.  It  was  the  negotiations  connected 
with  this  treaty  that  had  kept  Webster  at  his  post 
when  his  colleagues  of  the  cabinet  resigned.  An  at- 
tempted settlement  of  the  boundary  question  by  a 
reference  of  the  matter  in  dispute  to  the  King  of  the 
Netherlands  as  arbitrator,  in  1827,  had  failed,  the 
award  being  rejected  by  both  parties  in  183 1.     In  the 

463 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

fall  and  winter  of  1838-39  the  region  claimed  jointly 
by  Maine  and  New  Brunswick  threatened  to  become 
the  theatre  of  border  warfare.  The  State  of  Maine 
erected  forts  and  voted  $800,000  for  defence.  The 
intervention  of  General  Winfield  Scott,  however, 
averted  hostilities,  and  a  temporary  joint  occupa- 
tion of  the  disputed  territory  was  arranged.  By  the 
treaty  of  1842  the  boundary  was  finally  settled.  The 
treaty  also  provided  for  the  maintenance  by  each  gov- 
ernment of  a  naval  squadron  on  the  west  coast  of 
Africa,  for  the  suppression  of  the  slave-trade;  but,  so 
far  as  the  United  States  was  concerned,  the  resulting 
interference  with  the  trade  was  slight. 

The  Texas  question,  meantime,  had  been  quietly 
developing.  Van  Buren's  refusal  to  act  had  not  pre- 
vented the  continuance  of  the  agitation  for  annexa- 
tion in  the  South.  Resolutions  of  State  legislatures 
and  speeches  of  Congressmen  voiced  the  growing  de- 
mand of  that  section.  President  Tyler,  by  birth  and 
training  a  Southerner,  and  perhaps  encouraged  by 
the  change  from  a  Whig  to  a  Democratic  majority  in 
the  House  of  Representatives  as  a  result  of  the  Con- 
gressional elections  of  1842,  was  sympathetic — had 
not  Jefferson  been  the  first  annexationist  ? — and  was 
easily  induced  to  open  secret  negotiations  with  Texas. 
In  March,  1844,  Calhoun,  who  was  convinced  that 
England  was  acquiring  undue  influence  in  Texas, 
became  Secretary  of  State,  and  in  April  a  treaty  of 
annexation  was  signed  and  submitted  to  the  Senate. 
The  surprise  was  wellnigh  complete,  but  political 
reasons  suggested  delay.  It  would  not  be  wise,  on 
the  eve  of  a  Presidential  election,  to  commit  the 
United  States  to  a  step  of  such  far-reaching  conse- 
quences without  assurance  of  popular  support.     The 

464 


TERRITORIAL    SLAVERY 

breach  with  Tyler  had  given  the  Whigs  political  unity, 
and  they  were  confident  of  being  able  easily  to  elect 
their  favorite  candidate,  Clay.  The  Democrats,  on 
the  other  hand,  "seemed  to  be,  and  were,  in  hope- 
less discord."1  But  the  proposed  "reannexation" 
changed  the  face  of  the  situation.  Whether  or  not 
the  United  States  had  a  valid  claim  to  Texas  mat- 
tered little.  The  patent  fact  now  was  that  annexa- 
tion without  the  consent  of  Mexico  would  mean  war; 
and  was  there  any  party  that  would  venture  deliber- 
ately to  embark  on  an  aggressive  war  ? 

Tyler  had  no  party,  but  he  had  made  annexation 
the  issue  of  the  hour.  It  was  necessary  for  the  can- 
didates to  declare  themselves.  In  letters  shortly 
made  public  both  Clay  and  Van  Buren  put  them- 
selves on  record  as  opposed  to  annexation  against 
the  will  of  Mexico.  Van  Buren's  attitude  cost  him 
the  nomination.  Although  a  large  majority  of  the 
delegates  to  the  Democratic  convention  at  Balti- 
more were  instructed  for  Van  Buren,  they  refused  to 
obey  when  his  opinion  became  known,  and  a  unani- 
mous vote  was  cast  for  James  K.  Polk,  of  Tennessee, 
a  sound  and  consistent  Democrat,  with  a  creditable 
record  as  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives. 
The  platform  called  for  "the  reoccupation  of  Oregon, 
and  the  reannexation  of  Texas  at  the  earliest  prac- 
ticable period,"  as  "  great  American  measures."  The 
Whigs  had  already  nominated  Clay  on  a  platform 
which  made  no  mention  of  Texas.  The  campaign, 
resembling  in  some  of  its  features  that  of  1840,  was 
vigorously  pressed  on  both  sides.  Polk  received  170 
electoral  votes  to  105  for  Clay,  and  the  Democrats 

1  Stanwood,  History  of  the  Presidency,  209. 
465 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

were  again  in  power.  The  significance  of  the  popular 
vote  did  not  escape  notice.  James  G.  Birney,  again 
the  candidate  of  the  abolitionists,  polled  62,300  votes, 
nearly  nine  times  as  many  as  those  cast  for  him  in 
1840;  and  it  was  the  abolition  vote  that  determined 
the  result.  Had  the  abolitionists  voted  for  Clay, 
the  Whig  candidate  would  have  received  a  majority 
of  both  electoral  and  popular  votes.  Clearly  aboli- 
tion was  a  political  force  to  be  reckoned  with,  and 
neither  Whig  enmity  nor  Democratic  opposition  could 
hereafter  afford  to  ignore  it. 

On  June  8th  the  Senate,  by  a  decisive  vote  of  16 
to  35,  had  rejected  the  treaty  of  annexation.  Two 
days  later  the  President  laid  the  rejected  treaty,  to- 
gether with  all  the  correspondence  and  documents 
previously  considered  by  the  Senate  in  executive 
session,  before  the  House  of  Representatives,  thereby 
appealing  to  the  people  for  the  support  of  his  policy. 
The  election  in  November  was  a  victory  for  annexa- 
tion. Tyler  could  triumphantly  assert,  in  his  annual 
message  in  December,  that  "  it  is  the  will  of  both  the 
people  and  the  States  that  Texas  shall  be  annexed 
to  the  Union  promptly  and  immediately  " ;  and  he 
proposed  that  since  the  terms  of  annexation  had  al- 
ready been  agreed  upon,  an  act  or  joint  resolution 
be  passed  by  Congress  to  bring  the  result  about. 
Tyler's  administration,  notable  for  its  lack  of  party 
harmony,  had  at  last  found  its  opportunity.  A  joint 
resolution  was  at  once  introduced,  and  on  March  1, 
1845,  received  the  approval  of  the  President.  Texas 
was  admitted  as  a  State,  subject  to  the  approval  by 
Congress  of  its  constitution  thereafter  to  be  adopted, 
and  with  the  proviso  that  new  States,  not  exceeding 
four  in  number  besides  Texas,  might,  with  the  con- 

466 


TERRITORIAL    SLAVERY 

sent  of  Texas,  be  formed  out  of  the  territory  thus 
acquired.  The  terms  of  annexation  were  accepted 
by  the  Texan  Congress  in  June,  and  by  a  convention 
at  Austin  in  July.  In  October  a  constitution  was  rati- 
fied by  popular  vote,  and  on  December  29th  another 
joint  resolution  formally  admitted  Texas  as  a  State. 
The  area  of  the  acquisition  was  389,795  square  miles, 
or  about  125,000  square  miles  more  than,  the  area  of 
the  present  State. 

Five  days  after  the  approval  of  the  resolution  for 
annexation,  the  Mexican  Minister  entered  the  pro- 
test of  his  government  against  it  and  demanded  his 
passports,  and  by  the  end  of  the  month  diplomatic 
relations  between  the  two  governments  were  severed. 
More  than  a  year  elapsed,  however,  before  hostilities 
actually  broke  out  or  a  formal  declaration  of  war  was 
made.  To  many  it  seemed  as  though  the  assertion 
which  had  repeatedly  been  made  in  Congress,  that 
the  United  States  in  acquiring  Texas  would  not  ac- 
quire also  the  war  between  Texas  and  Mexico,  was 
to  be  proved  true.  The  failure  of  Mexico  to  recover 
Texas  made  it,  indeed,  unlikely  that  she  would  have 
any  better  success  now  that  the  revolted  State  had 
become  a  part  of  the  United  States.  "It  was  gen- 
erally expected  that  Mexico  would  make  a  great  ado 
over  annexation,  but  .it  was*  considered  utterly  im- 
probable that  her  actions  would  follow  her  words,  or 
would,  in  any  way,  correspond  to  them."  '  Presi- 
dent Polk  had  ordered  a  strong  squadron  to  the  coast 
of  Mexico  and  concentrated  a  military  force  on  the 
western  frontier  of  Texas,  but  he  was  able  to  inform 
Congress  in  his  annual  message  of  December  2,  1845, 

*  Ven  Hoist,  United  States,  III.,  81. 
467 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

that  Mexico  had  as  yet  "made  no  aggressive  move- 
ment," and  that  the  peace  of  the  two  republics  had 
1  'not  been  disturbed." 

The  boundary  dispute  between  Texas  and  Mexico 
provided  the  needed  occasion.  The  southern  bound- 
ary of  Texas  extended  only  to  the  Nueces  River. 
Texas  claimed,  however,  the  territory  of  Coahuila, 
which  reached  to  the  Rio  Grande,  although  Coahuila 
had  not  joined  Texas  in  the  revolt  against  Mexico; 
and  the  Congress  of  Texas,  in  1836,  had  declared  the 
Rio  Grande  to  be  the  boundary  of  the  republic.  As 
the  Congress  was  a  revolutionary  body,  and  the  au- 
thority of  Texas  had  never  been  successfully  estab- 
lished beyond  the  Nueces,  the  claim  to  the  region 
between  the  rivers  had  no  standing  in  law  and  but 
little  in  fact.  The  question  was  one  in  regard  to 
which  the  United  States,  after  the  annexation,  would 
have  to  reach  a  conclusion;  but  Polk,  ignoring  the 
fact  that  the  decision  was  one  for  Congress  rather 
than  the  President,  took  the  reins  into  his  own  hands. 
General  Zachary  Taylor,  in  command  of  the  United 
States  forces  in  Texas,  had  already,  under  orders 
from  the  President,  crossed  the  Nueces  River,  where 
his  army  had  gradually  been  increased  to  about  4000 
men.  In  January,  1846,  Polk  ordered  a  further  ad- 
vance to  the  Rio  Grande,  and  on  March  28th  Taylor 
took  up  a  position  opposite  Matamoras.  The  Mexi- 
can commander  ordered  him  to  withdraw,  and  on 
Taylor's  refusal,  attacked  and  captured,  April  25th,  a 
small  party  of  American  dragoons,  some  sixteen  of 
the  Americans  being  killed  or  wounded.  On  May  8th 
and  9th  Taylor  defeated  the  Mexicans  at  Palo  Alto 
and  Resaca  de  la  Palma,  drove  them  across  the  river, 
and  took  Matamoras. 

468 


TERRITORIAL    SLAVERY 

On  May  nth  President  Polk  sent  to  Congress  a 
special  message,  in  which  he  declared  that "  now,  after 
reiterated  menaces,  Mexico  has  passed  the  boundary 
of  the  United  States,  has  invaded  our  territory,  and 
shed  American  blood  upon  the  American  soil " ;  and 
that,  "  as  war  exists,  and,  notwithstanding  all  our 
efforts  to  avoid  it,  exists  by  the  act  of  Mexico  herself, 
we  are  called  upon  by  every  consideration  of  duty 
and  patriotism  to  vindicate  with  decision  the  honor, 
the  rights,  and  the  interests  of  our  country."  An  act 
providing  50,000  volunteers  and  $10,000,000  for  the 
prosecution  of  the  war  was  at  once  passed.  The  as- 
sertion of  the  message  and  of  the  act  that  war  existed 
"by  act  of  Mexico"  was  vehemently  denied  by  the 
Whigs,  who  insisted  that  hostilities  had  been  brought 
about  by  deliberate  aggression  on  the  part  of  the 
United  States.  In  the  country  at  large,  however, 
and  particularly  in  the  South,  "Polk's  war"  was 
popular.  When  the  50,000  volunteers  were  called 
for  200,000  responded.  Only  in  New  England  were 
enlistments  small. 

Before  the  war  was  fairly  under  way,  a  treaty  with 
Great  Britain  had  brought  the  Oregon  question  to 
amicable  settlement.  The  region  known  as  Oregon 
had  been  claimed  by  both  Great  Britain  and  the 
United  States,  the  claim  of  the  latter  going  back  to 
the  discovery  of  the  Columbia  River  by  a  Captain 
Gray  ini79i.  Ini8i3  the  two  countries  agreed  to  a 
joint  occupancy  of  the  country  for  ten  years.  The 
limits  of  the  region  were  further  defined  by  the  treaty 
of  1 81 9  between  the  United  States  and  Spain,  by 
which  the  parallel  42  °  north  latitude  was  declared  to 
be  the  northern  boundary  of  Spanish  territory  on 
the  Pacific.     Subsequent  treaties  with  Russia  fixed 

469 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  southern  limits  of  the  Russian  possessions  at  540 
40'.  Permanent  settlements  began  about  1830,  and 
a  small  American  population,  attracted  by  the  fur- 
trade  and  the  opportunities  of  a  new  country,  was 
gradually  established  there.  Fremont  visited  Oregon 
in  1842,  on  one  of  his  exploring  expeditions,  and  a 
demand  for  the  definite  incorporation  of  the  country 
with  the  United  States,  and  the  dispossession  of 
Great  Britain,  presently  arose.  We  have  already 
seen  that  the  Democratic  platform,  in  1844,  de- 
manded the  "  reoccupation"  of  Oregon, "  the  intention 
being,  of  course,  to  use  Oregon  as  an  offset  to  Texas  " ; 
and  Polk,  in  his  inaugural  address,  asserted  his  pur- 
pose to  maintain  the  rights  of  the  United  States  in 
that  part  of  the  world.  The  difficulty  was  to  agree 
with  Great  Britain  upon  the  proper  boundary.  In 
the  course  of  the  diplomatic  negotiations  the  parallel 
of  490  was  several  times  proposed,  but  was  rejected 
by  Great  Britain.  Popular  opposition  to  compromise 
brought  out  demands  for  "all  Oregon,"  and  for  a 
time  the  country  rang  with  the  cry,  "  Fifty-four  forty 
or  fight!"  In  the  summer  of  1846  the  controversy 
was  settled.  The  United  States  accepted  the  line  of 
490,  with  the  free  navigation  of  the  Columbia  River. 
The  total  area  of  the  region  thus  acquired  was  288,- 
689  square  miles.  A  bill  to  organize  a  territorial 
government  for  Oregon  was  rejected  by  the  Senate, 
in  1845,  because  of  the  prohibition  of  slavery,  and  it 
was  not  until  1848  that  a  territorial  government  was 
at  last  provided. 

The  military  story  of  the  Mexican  War  is  one  brief- 
ly told.  Notwithstanding  the  stubbornness  and  skill 
with  which  the  Mexicans  opposed  the  American  ad- 
vance, it  was  from  the  outset  an  unequal  contest, 

470 


TERRITORIAL    SLAVERY 

whose  final  outcome  did  not  admit  of  doubt.  On 
May  1 8th,  five  days  after  Congress  voted  men  and 
money  for  the  war,  Taylor  occupied  Matamoras. 
California  was  shortly  taken  by  fleets  under  the 
command  of  Commodores  Sloat  and  Stockton,  aid- 
ed by  a  land  force  under  Fremont.  A  force  under 
General  Kearney,  advancing  overland  from  Fort 
Leavenworth,  on  the  Missouri  River,  took  Santa  Fe, 
and  with  it  New  Mexico.  In  September  Taylor  took 
Monterey,  where  he  established  winter  -  quarters. 
Kearney,  leaving  Colonel  Doniphan  at  Santa  Fe, 
pushed  on  to  California,  while  Doniphan  shortly  took 
Chihuahua  and  joined  Taylor  at  Monterey.  A  large 
part  of  the  northern  possessions  of  Mexico  was  now 
in  the  hands  of  the  United  States.  It  was  decided 
to  keep  what  had  been  won,  whatever  the  outcome 
of  the  war,  but  to  pay  Mexico  for  it ;  and  the  remainder 
of  the  war  was  fought  to  compel  the  submission  of 
Mexico  and  prevent  it  from  recovering  the  conquered 
provinces. 

The  campaign  of  1847  began  with  the  advance  of 
Taylor  southwest  from  Monterey,  while  General 
Scott  started  for  the  city  of  Mexico  by  way  of  Vera 
Cruz.  At  Buena  Vista,  on  February  23d,  Taylor, 
with  a  force  of  about  five  thousand  men,  overwhelm- 
ingly defeated  a  Mexican  army  of  four  times  that 
number,  under  command  of  Santa  Anna.  This  closed 
the  active  campaign  in  the  north.  Taylor,  whose 
force  had  been  reduced  to  aid  Scott,  shortly  relin- 
quished his  command  and  returned  to  the  United 
States,  where  his  successful  "war  record"  was  short- 
ly to  give  him  the  Presidency.  Scott,  meantime,  had 
taken  Vera  Cruz  early  in  March,  and  immediately  be- 
gan his  advance  upon  the  Mexican  capital.     The  land 

471 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

rises  rapidly  from  the  coast  to  the  interior,  and  the 
steep  ascent  and  narrow  mountain-passes  admirably 
fit  the  country  for  defence.  On  April  18th,  however, 
Scott  carried  by  storm  the  heights  of  Cerro  Gordo, 
from  whence  he  pressed  on  to  Puebla,  where  he  re- 
mained for  two  months  to  rest  his  army.  In  August, 
with  a  force  numbering  11,000  men,  the  advance  was 
resumed.  The  city  of  Mexico  lay  in  a  basin  sur- 
rounded by  marshes,  and  the  approaches  and  points 
of  vantage  had  been  strongly  fortified.  On  August 
19th  the  two  armies  met,  the  battles  of  Contreras, 
San  Antonio,  and  Churubusco  being  all  fought  on  that 
day.  The  Mexican  army,  numbering  about  thirty 
thousand,  fought  desperately,  but  to  no  purpose. 
That  the  Mexicans  might  not  be  humiliated  by  the 
actual  capture  of  the  city  by  the  Americans,  Scctt 
agreed  to  a  proposal  from  Santa  Anna  for  an  armis- 
tice of  three  weeks  in  which  to  negotiate  for  peace. 
The  negotiations  came  to  nothing,  however,  and,  as 
Santa  Anna  was  using  the  interval  to  strengthen  his 
position,  the  armistice  was  terminated.  On  Septem- 
ber 8th,  Scott  defeated  the  enemy  at  Molino  del  Rey, 
and  on  the  13th  stormed  the  heights  of  Chapultepec 
and  entered  the  city.  The  conquest  of  the  city 
was  completed  the  next  day,  and  the  Mexican  War 
was  at  an  end.  Both  sides  had  fought  bravely,  but 
the  superior  training  and  equipment  of  the  Americans 
made  every  battle  a  victory  for  the  invaders.  Grant 
afterwards  declared  that  all  the  older  officers  who 
won  distinction  in  the  Civil  War  had  served  under 
Taylor  or  Scott.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  both 
Grant  and  Lee  were  of  the  number. 

On  February  2,  1848,  representatives  of  the  two 
countries  concluded  the  treaty  of  Guadalupe  Hidalgo. 

472 


TERRITORIAL    SLAVERY 

Mexico  ceded  to  the  United  States  New  Mexico  and 
California,  receiving  therefor  the  sum  of  $15,000,000, 
together  with  a  release  from  all  claims  against  it  held 
by  citizens  of  the  United  States.  The  amount  of 
these  claims  made  the  total  purchase  price  about 
$18,250,000.  The  area  of  the  territory  acquired  by 
the  treaty  was  523,802  square  miles.  A  readjust- 
ment of  boundaries  by  the  ''Gadsden  Purchase,"  in 
1853,  added  36,211  square  miles. 

The  status  of  slavery  in  the  new  territory  had  be- 
come, in  the  mean  time,  the  subject  of  spirited  and 
anxious  debate  in  Congress.  In  a  special  message 
of  August  8,  1846,  President  Polk  asked  Congress  for 
$2,000,000  with  which  to  negotiate  a  treaty  of 
peace  with  Mexico.  The  opponents  of  slavery  ex- 
tension were  ready.  The  Whigs,  indeed,  were  as 
a  party  neither  abolitionists  nor  yet  Free  -  Soilers, 
but  they  were  practically  a  unit  in  general  opposition 
to  slavery.  Even  the  Democrats,  though  effectual- 
ly controlled  as  a  party  by  the  South,  had  showed 
here  and  there  some  antislavery  tendencies.  It  was 
a  Democrat  who  took  the  lead.  In  the  debate  in  the 
House  which  followed  Polk's  message,  David  Wilmot, 
a  Democratic  representative  from  Pennsylvania, 
moved  to  amend  the  bill  making  the  appropriation 
by  adding  the  proviso  "that,  as  an  express  and  fun- 
damental condition  to  the  acquisition  of  any  terri- 
tory from  the  republic  of  Mexico  by  the  United 
States,  by  virtue  of  any  treaty  which  may  be  ne- 
gotiated between  them,  and  to  the  use  by  the  Exec- 
utive of  the  moneys  herein  appropriated,  neither 
slavery  nor  involuntary  servitude  shall  ever  exist  in 
any  part  of  isaid  territory,  except  for  crime,  whereof 
the  party  snail  first  be  duly  convicted."  Wilmot  had  * 
31/  473 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

raised  the  issue  on  which  public  opinion  was  soon 
sharply  to  divide.  The  House,  where  the  free  States 
had  the  majority  of  members,  accepted  the  amend- 
ment, but  the  bill  failed  of  consideration  in  the 
Senate.  In  February,  1847,  the  House  again  incor- 
porated the  "  Wilmot  Proviso"  in  a  bill  appropriat- 
ing $3,000,000  for  the  achievement  of  peace,  but  the 
Senate,  under  the  unexpected  lead  of  Lewis  Cass, 
of  Michigan,  who  had  been  supposed  to  favor  the 
proviso,  rejected  it,  and  the  bill  passed  without  it. 
With  the  discussion  of  the  future  status  of  California 
and  New  Mexico  was  joined  the  question  of  Terri- 
torial government  for  Oregon.  In  August,  1848, 
after  a  debate  of  some  three  months,  Oregon  was  or- 
ganized as  a  Territory,  slavery  being  excluded  by 
incorporating  in  the  act  the  antislavery  provisions 
of  the  famous  ordinance  of  1787. 

There  appears  to  have  been  at  first  no  general  or 
serious  popular  opposition  to  the  Wilmot  Proviso. 
The  region  in  question  was,  of  course,  not  included 
in  the  scope  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  but  slavery 
had  long  since  been  abolished  there  by  Mexican  law. 
It  seemed  hardly  necessary,  therefore,  to  raise  the 
question,  or  to  invite  controversy  over  a  matter  al- 
ready settled.  It  was  not  long,  however,  before  pub- 
lic opinion,  now  for  some  seventeen  years  systemati- 
cally worked  upon  by  the  abolitionists,  began  to 
change.  The  Presidential  election  of  1848  was  the 
first  sign  of  divergence.  Neither  the  Whigs  nor  the 
Democrats  would  commit  themselves  on  the  ques- 
tion. Thereupon  a  faction  of  the  Democrats  in  New 
York,  known  as  the  "Barnburners,"  reinforced  by 
delegates  from  Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  Ohio, 
and  Wisconsin,  nominated  Van  Buren.     A  few  weeks 

474 


TERRITORIAL    SLAVERY 

later  Van  Buren  was  again  nominated  by  a  conven- 
tion at  Buffalo,  composed  of  some  three  hundred 
delegates  from  seventeen  States,  on  a  platform  which 
asserted  that  the  history  of  the  country  showed  it  to 
be  "the  settled  policy  of  the  nation  not  to  extend, 
nationalize,  or  encourage,  but  to  limit,  localize,  and 
discourage  slavery."  The  convention  inscribed  on 
its  banner,  "  Free  Soil,  Free  Speech,  Free  Labor,  and 
Free  Men."  Here,  at  last,  was  a  party  that  knew 
its  own  mind,  and  whose  attitude  towards  slavery 
was  at  once  definite  and  positive.  On  the  nomina- 
tion of  Van  Buren  by  the  Free-Soilers,  the  candidate 
who  had  been  nominated  by  the  so-called  "Liberty 
party,"  John  P.  Hale,  of  New  Hampshire,  withdrew. 
The  Liberty  party  gradually  merged  itself  in  the 
Free-Soil  party,  "  and  the  more  radical  programme  of 
abolition  is  replaced  by  the  more  practicable  pro- 
gramme of  the  exclusion  of  slavery  from  the  Terri- 
tories."1 The  Whigs,  having  at  the  moment  no 
policy  worth  declaring,  put  their  trust  in  a  soldier 
candidate,  General  Zachary  Taylor,  associating  with 
him  on  the  ticket  Millard  Fillmore,  of  New  York. 
The  popular  vote  was  not  large,  and  the  success 
of  the  Whigs,  while  substantial  —  Taylor  received 
163  electoral  votes  to  127  for  Cass — was  in  no  way 
particularly  striking,  save  for  the  support  given 
to  Taylor,  himself  a  Southerner,  by  six  southern 
States. 

Of  far-reaching  social  change  there  were,  however, 
many  significant  indications.  The  social  ferment 
which  in  Europe  culminated  in  the  revolutions  of 
1848  had,   it  is  true,   little  direct  connection  with 

1  Woodrow  Wilson,  Division  and  Reunion,  159. 
475 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

events  in  America,  but  there  were  not  wanting  even 
in  this  new  country  evidences  of  profound  unrest  and 
still  more  profound   social   transformation.     It  had 
become  an  age  of  railroads,   steamboats,  and    tele- 
graphs.    The  wonderful   growth   of  means   of   com- 
munication, by  breaking  down,  if  rudely,  local   and 
provincial  barriers,  disseminating  news,  and  making 
ideas  more  quickly  common  property,  worked  every- 
where for  liberty,  especially  in  the  minds  of  the  mass- 
es.    Anthracite   coal,    friction   matches,    McCormick 
reapers,  sewing-machines,  and  daily  newspapers  add- 
ed to  the  pleasure  and  convenience  of  life,  or  increased 
the  profitableness  of  labor.     It  was  only  a  few  years 
since  the  people  of  Rhode  Island,  chafing  under  the 
restrictions  of  an  antiquated  constitution  which  de- 
nied the  suffrage  to  two-thirds  of  the  adult  males  of 
the  State,  had  broken  out  in  rebellion  against  leaders 
who  governed  them  selfishly  and  ill,  and  through  the 
"Dorr  War"   had  forced   the   desired   reforms.     At 
about  the  same  time  the  anti-rent  riots  in  New  York 
put  an  end  to  the  remnants  of  feudal  privilege  hith- 
erto enjoyed  by  the  Dutch  proprietors,  descendants  of 
the  old  "patroons"  along  the  Hudson.     Even  more 
significant,   after   1845,   was  the  sudden  increase  of 
foreign  immigration,  stimulated  particularly  by  dis- 
astrous potato  famines  in  Ireland,  and  urged  on  by 
the  reactionary  policy  which  in  the  continental  States, 
especially  those  of  Germany,  followed  the  failure  of 
the  popular  risings  of  1848-49.     If  the  immigrants 
brought  with  them  something  of  hatred  of  their  na- 
tive land,  they  brought  no  less  also  a  deep  repugnance 
to  slavery;  and  it  was  observed  that,  as  they  spread 
about  the  country,  their  course  was  west,  not  south. 
Many  men  of  the  South  longed  for  a  share  in  the 

476 


TERRITORIAL    SLAVERY 

new  industrial  development,  but  slavery  made  it  im- 
possible. Finally,  a  long  line  of  distinguished  writers 
and  scientists — Hawthorne,  Poe,  Whittier,  Long- 
fellow, Bancroft,  Holmes,  Prescott,  Lowell,  Story, 
Wheaton,  Kent,  Lieber,  Audubon,  Asa  Gray — was 
working  worthily  to  bring  about  the  intellectual  in- 
dependence of  America,  of  which  Emerson  was  the 
chief  embodiment. 

All  other  interests  were  dwarfed  into  momentary 
insignificance,  however,  by  the  report  that  California 
was  a  land  of  gold.  The  discovery  of  gold,  coming 
at  about  the  same  time  as  the  treaty  which  ceded 
California  to  the  United  States,  was  followed  by  such 
a  spontaneous  movement  of  population  as  the  world 
has  never  elsewhere  seen.  From  all  parts  of  the 
country,  though  least  from  the  cotton-growing  South, 
men  nocked  to  the  new  El  Dorado.  Some  went  by 
way  of  the  Isthmus  of  Panama,  some  by  the  long  way 
around  Cape  Horn.  Many  made  the  toilsome  jour- 
ney across  the  plains,  their  long  trains  of  "prairie- 
schooners,"  drawn  by  horses  or  oxen,  threading  path- 
less wastes  of  unknown  prairie,  struggling  over  moun- 
tains, fighting  hostile  Indians,  braving  hunger,  cold, 
and  heat,  hardship  and  death,  in  the  eager  pursuit  of 
gold.  A  short  period  of  lawlessness  and  crime  fol- 
lowed, and  then  the  better  element  asserted  itself; 
and  soon  California,  though  as  yet  with  only  a  mili- 
tary government  to  represent  the  United  States,  be- 
gan building  for  the  future.  Of  slavery  on  any  terms 
its  people  would  have  nothing,  nor  were  they  in- 
clined to  accept  a  Territorial  status.  In  September, 
1849,  a  constitutional  convention  formed  an  anti- 
slavery  State  constitution,  and  before  the  end  of  the 
year   a    State    government    had   been    set    up.     On 

477- 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

February  13,  1850,  the  constitution  of  the  new  State 
was  laid  before  Congress  by  the  President.  Similar 
steps  for  the  organization  of  State  governments  were 
taken  by  the  people  of  New  Mexico  and  the  Mor- 
mons of  Utah. 

The  admission  of  California  as  a  free  State  would 
destroy  that  "equilibrium  of  the  sections"  which  for 
years  had  been  the  anxious  concern  of  American 
statesmen,  and  in  the  maintenance  of  which  some 
had  seen  the  only  hope  of  national  safety.  The  solu- 
tion of  the  difficulty  was  not  made  easier  by  the  fact 
that,  while  there  was  a  safe  Democratic  majority  in 
the  Senate,  the  balance  of  power  in  the  House  of 
Representatives  was  held  by  a  small  group  of  Free- 
Soilers.  There  were  other  questions  besides  Califor- 
nia, too,  involved.  A  part  of  the  Texas  boundary 
was  in  dispute,  and  a  movement  on  the  part  of  the 
United  States  to  assert  its  claims  had  been  met  by 
threats  of  resistance.  The  South  was  angry  at  the 
continued  demand  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the 
District  of  Columbia,  and  at  the  protection  and  aid 
increasingly  extended  by  the  North  to  fugitive  slaves. 
Robert  Toombs,  of  Georgia,  had  openly  declared  that 
he  was  "for  disunion,"  and  the  sentiment  was  en- 
dorsed by  his  colleague  Alexander  H.  Stephens. 
Since  the  Presidential  campaign  of  1848,  moreover, 
the  doctrine  of  "  squatter  sovereignty,"  with  its  claim 
that  the  people  of  any  Territory  or  State  should  be 
allowed  to  decide  for  themselves  whether  or  not  they 
would  have  slavery,  had  been  making  strong  head- 
way. ^  Clay  once  more  came  forward  as  the  great  com- 
promiser. On  January  29,  1850,  in  a  series  of  resolu- 
tions, he  had  laid  a  basis  for  settlement,  and  on 
May  8th  a  select  committee,  of  which  he  was  chair- 

,    478 


TERRITORIAL    SLAVERY 

man,  reported  two  bills,  "one  to  admit  California  as 
a  State,  to  establish  Territorial  governments  for  Utah 
and  New  Mexico,  and  making  proposals  to  Texas  for 
the  establishment  of  her  western  and  northern  boun- 
daries, and  the  other  to  suppress  the  slave-trade  in 
the  District  of  Columbia."  The  different  parts  of  the 
"omnibus  bill,"  as  it  was  called,  were  eventually 
separated,  but  in  September  all  the  propositions  re- 
ported by  the  committee  became  law. 

By  the  compromise  of  1850,  as  finally  adopted, 
two  Territories,  Utah  and  New  Mexico,  were  or- 
ganized, with  the  provision  that  either  of  them,  when 
admitted  as  a  State,  "shall  be  received  into  the 
Union,  with  or  without  slavery,  as  their  constitutions 
may  prescribe  at  the  time  of  their  admission."  Cali- 
fornia was  admitted  as  a  free  State.  The  Texas 
boundary  was  adjusted,  $10,000,000  being  paid  to 
Texas  in  satisfaction  of  its  claim.  A  stringent  fugi- 
tive law  replaced  the  old  law  of  1793,  and  the  slave- 
trade,  but  not  slavery,  was  abolished  in  the  District 
of  Columbia. 

The  debate  on  the  compromise  measures,  extend- 
ing over  a  period  of  more  than  eight  months,  trav- 
ersed in  its  course  nearly  every  phase  of  the  slavery 
question.  It  was  clear  from  the  beginning  that  the 
question  of  abolition  was  no  longer  directly  involved, 
but  that  the  issue  lay  between  free  soil  on  the  one 
hand  and  squatter  sovereignty  on  the  other.  The 
southern  members  in  the  main  opposed  the  com- 
promise. Benton  dubbed  it  "compromise  plaster." 
Calhoun,  in  a  great  speech  on  March  4,  1850,  in  op- 
position to  Clay's  resolutions  —  a  speech  which  his 
failing  strength  did  not  allow  him  to  deliver,  and 
which  was  read  by  Senator  Mason,  of  Virginia — af- 

479 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

firmed  that  the  Union  was  endangered  by  the  dis- 
content of  the  South,  and  that  the  admission  of 
California  as  a  free  State  would  destroy  the  equi- 
librium of  the  sections  without  preventing  further 
agitation  of  the  slavery  question.  In  his  view,  the 
United  States  was  a  "slave  -  holding  power,"  and 
throughout  all  its  territory,  particularly  in  that  which 
had  been  won  by  common  effort  of  the  whole  country, 
the  South  had  as  much  right  as  the  North.  It  was 
the  great  Southerner's  last  word,  for  before  the  month 
had  ended  he  was  dead. 

The  most  distinguished  convert  to  the  compromise 
was  Webster.  Webster  was  beyond  doubt  the  great- 
est constitutional  lawyer,  the  most  powerful  orator, 
and  the  most  prominent  statesman  in  American  pub- 
lic life.  That  he  seriously  feared  for  the  stability  of 
the  Constitution  is  as  undoubted  as  that' he  was,  in 
general,  averse  to  the  extension  of  slavery;  but  he 
was  also  on  record  as  a  bitter  opponent  of  the  aboli- 
tion movement,  while  his  anxious  pursuit  of  the 
Presidency  had  not  served  to  increase  the  firmness 
of  his  political  principles.  In  a  great  speech  in  the 
Senate,  on  March  7th,  he  declared  the  Wilmot 
Proviso  unnecessary.  Slavery  was  excluded  from 
California  and  New  Mexico  by  natural  causes;  no 
need,  then,  of  a  proviso  "to  reaffirm  an  ordinance 
of  nature,  or  re-enact  the  will  of  God."  On  the  other 
hand,  while  the  South  had  just  grievances  against  the 
North  in  the  matter  of  the  treatment  of  fugitive 
slaves,  the  abolition  agitation,  and  the  violence  of  the 
press,  the  North  could  complain  that  the  South  was 
now  bent  upon  encouraging  slavery,  and  violating 
State  comity  by  imprisoning  colored  seamen  of  north- 
ern  vessels  when  in   southern  ports.     Of  secession, 

480 


TERRITORIAL    ACQUISITIONS    O] 


HE    UNITED    STATES,    1783-1853 


TERRITORIAL    SLAVERY 

however,  at  which  some  southern  members  had  hint- 
ed, and  which  Garrison  had  favored  in  the  North, 
there  was  no  likelihood;  "gentlemen  are  not  serious 
when  they  talk  of  secession." 

Most  of  the  discussion,  singularly  sober  for  a  de- 
bate in  which  feeling  and  prejudice,  tradition  and 
habit,  were  so  much  involved,  was  of  expediency,  ad- 
justment, legal  or  constitutional  rights,  equity,  good 
faith.  One  clear  note  of  moral  protest  was  heard. 
Senator  William  H.  Seward,  of  New  York,  speaking 
for  the  Free-Soilers  as  well  as  for  himself,  opposed  all 
compromise,  this  one  in  particular,  and  insisted  that 
no  compromise  would  avail  to  stay  the  agitation 
against  slavery.  The  Constitution,  he  declared,  does 
not  recognize  property  in  man,  nor  yet  any  such 
thing  as  an  equilibrium  between  free  States  and  slave. 
A  "  higher  law"  recognizes  the  national  domain  as  a 
part  of  the  common  heritage  of  mankind,  and  the 
American  people  as  the  administrators  of  it  in  the 
name  of  the  Creator. 

It  was  not  at  once  seen  which  side  had  gained  the 
most  by  the  compromise.  California  was  a  free  State, 
and  with  its  admission  the  balance  between  the  sec- 
tions in  the  Senate  had  been  destroyed,  never  to  be 
restored.  On  the  other  hand,  the  application  of 
" squatter  sovereignty"  to  New  Mexico  and  Utah 
left  those  Territories  at  liberty  to  become  slave  States 
if  they  chose ;  and  it  was  clear  that  the  decision  would 
be,  in  the  main,  a  matter  of  climate.  The  painful 
features  of  the  slave-market  would  no  longer  thrust 
themselves  before  members  of  Congress  on  their  way 
to  and  from  the  capitol  building  at  Washington.  So 
far  the  greater  immediate  gain  appeared  to  accrue  to 
the  North.     Two  things  only   had  the  South,   still 

481 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

dominant  in  the  national  councils,  won:  a  postpone- 
ment of  the  final  decision  about  slavery,  and  a  dread- 
fully efficient  fugitive-slave  law.  The  first  gave  but 
a  brief  breathing  space,  while  the  second  unwittingly 
heartened  the  North  for  war. 


XXI 

THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

THERE  were  not  wanting  those  who  looked  upon 
the  compromise  of  1850  as  a  final  adjustment 
of  the  slavery  controversy.  Troublesome  as  the 
question  had  been,  it  had  now,  it  was  thought,  been 
settled,  and  settled  on  principle.  So  long  as  slavery 
was  not  to  be  abolished  as  a  moral  evil,  what  better 
or  fairer  adjustment  could  there  be  than  to  let  each 
new  State,  as  it  came  into  the  Union,  decide  for 
itself  whether  its  labor  should  be  slave  or  free?  So 
thought  many.  Webster  went  about  the  country 
defending  the  arrangement,  albeit  speaking  of  his  op- 
ponents with  a  bitterness  which  was  not  his  wont. 
Eight  hundred  leading  men  of  Boston  and  vicinity, 
among  them  George  Ticknor,  Rufus  Choate,  William 
H.  Prescott,  and  Jared  Sparks,  signed  an  address  ap- 
proving the  doctrine  of  his  seventh-of -March  speech, 
and  enthusiastic  admirers  cancelled  his  notes  and 
gave  him  presents  of  money.  But  Webster's  work 
was  nearly  done.  The  blow  which  his  defence  of  the 
fugitive-slave  act  gave  to  the  antislavery  cause  re- 
coiled speedily  upon  his  own  head.  He  lived  long 
enough  to  be  dethroned  by  the  New  England  which 
had  looked  up  to  him  as  to  a  god,  to  be  repudiated 
by  those  whose  political  convictions  he  had  done 
much  to  form,  and  to  be  denounced  as  an  apostate 

483 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

and  a  renegade  by  those  to  whom  human  freedom 
and  not  political  expediency  had  become  the  one 
great  issue.  The  condemnation  was  harsh  and  ex- 
treme, and  took  little  account  of  the  legal  and  con- 
stitutional soundness  of  much  of  his  argument,  but 
under  its  crushing  weight  Webster  sank  rapidly.  In 
July,  1850,  before  the  debate  on  the  compromise 
measures  was  over,  the  death  of  President  Taylor, 
and  the  succession  of  Vice-president  Fillmore,  gave 
Webster  once  more  the  office  of  Secretary  of  State; 
and  he  was  still  secretary  when,  on  October  24, 
1852,  he  died.  History  has  been  kind  to  him,  for 
while  it  cannot  overlook  the  clouded  evening  of 
his  momentous  life,  it  thinks  most  of  the  long  and 
brilliant  day,  when  the  greatest  of  American  states- 
men used  with  consummate  power  his  splendid  en- 
dowments of  intellect,  voice,  and  presence  for  the 
maintenance  of  liberty  and  union,  and  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Constitution  as  the  supreme  law  of  the 
land. 

Two  diplomatic  matters  only  of  special  importance 
developed  during  Webster's  last  term  as  Secretary 
of  State.  The  first  was  connected  with  the  revolu- 
tion of  1848  in  Hungary,  and  the  popular  demand  in 
this  country  for  the  recognition  of  Hungarian  in- 
dependence. Complaint  by  Hulsemann,  the  Austrian 
charge  d'affaires  at  Washington,  of  the  action  of  the 
United  States  in  sending  an  agent  to  Hungary  to 
investigate  the  conditions  there,  called  out  the  fa- 
mous "Hulsemann  letter,"  in  which  Webster  sharply 
rebuked  the  Austrian  representative  and  brilliantly 
vindicated,  though  in  language  needlessly  direct  and 
emphatic,  the  course  of  this  government.  Later, 
when  Kossuth  and  other  Hungarian  refugees  were 

484 


THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

brought  to  the  United  States  in  an  American  war 
vessel,  their  enthusiastic  reception  again  threatened 
a  breach  with  Austria,  but  Webster  succeeded  in 
maintaining  friendly  relations  between  the  two  gov- 
ernments, while  at  the  same  time  expressing  his  per- 
sonal sympathy  for  Kossuth  and  his  cause.  So  far 
as  recognition  or  financial  aid  was  concerned,  Kos- 
suth's mission,  like  the  movement  for  Hungarian  in- 
dependence of  which  he  had  been  the  leader,  was  a 
failure. 

The  other  episode  grew  out  of  the  Clayton- Bui wer 
treaty  of  1850.  By  this  treaty  the  United  States  and 
Great  Britain  had  declared  that  neither  government 
would  ever  obtain  or  assert  any  exclusive  control  over 
any  ship-canal  that  might  be  constructed  through 
Nicaragua  or  any  other  part  of  Central  America,  but 
would  guarantee  its  neutrality,  to  the  end  that  the 
canal  might  always  be  free  and  open  to  the  commerce 
of  all  nations.  The  treaty  led  to  a  long  correspond- 
ence with  Great  Britain  over  the  claim  of  the  latter 
to  levy  port  charges  on  the  so-called  Mosquito  coast 
in  Nicaragua,  and  to  a  controversy  with  Mexico  re- 
garding the  right  of  way  across  Tehuantepec,  both 
of  which  questions  were  satisfactorily  settled.  Simi- 
lar success  attended  the  adjustment  of  difficulties 
which  followed  the  fitting  out  of  filibustering  ex- 
peditions against  Cuba,  and  an  attack  by  a  mob  on 
the  Spanish  consulate  at  New  Orleans. 

All  other  issues  were  relegated  to  second  place, 
however,  by  the  increasing  excitement  which  attend- 
ed the  enforcement  of  the  fugitive-slave  law  in  the 
North.  The  terms  of  the  act  were  of  the  utmost 
stringency.  The  act  authorized  the  owner  of  any 
fugitive  slave,  or  his  agent  or  representative,  to  pur- 

485 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

sue  the  fugitive  into  any  State  or  Territory,  arrest 
him,  and  have  the  captor's  claim  to  ownership  im- 
mediately examined  by  the  courts  or  by  commission- 
ers especially  appointed  for  the  purpose.  The  testi- 
mony of  the  negro  could  not  be  received  as  evidence 
in  any  trial  or  hearing.  Any  person  aiding  in  the 
rescue  or  escape  of  a  fugitive  slave,  or  interfering 
with  the  custody  of  him  by  his  alleged  owner,  was 
liable  to  a  fine  of  $1000,  or  imprisonment  for  six 
months,  and  to  the  forfeiture  of  the  further  sum  of 
$1000  "by  way  of  civil  damages  to  the  party  injured 
by  such  illegal  conduct."  Officers  charged  with  the 
custody  or  return  of  fugitives  were  authorized  to  em- 
ploy such  aid  as  might  be  necessary  to  enable  them 
to  perform  the  service.  In  short,  the  act  was  so  con- 
trived as,  naturally,  to  throw  all  the  presumption  on 
the  side  of  the  owner  or  his  agent,  while  at  the  same 
time  placing  at  his  disposal,  for  the  enforcement  of 
his  claim,  the  whole  physical  power  of  the  com- 
munity. 

Wide-spread  opposition  was  not  long  in  showing 
itself.  The  pulpit,  long  silent,  began  to  speak  out, 
and  public  meetings  both  voiced  and  nourished  the 
popular  feeling  that  the  law,  however  constitutional, 
was  cruel  and  unjust.  Slave-owners  and  their  agents, 
the  latter  often  men  of  brutal  instincts  and  coarse 
manners,  found  the  pursuit  and  apprehension  of 
fugitive  negroes  increasingly  difficult  and  dangerous. 
In  September,  1851,  one  Gorsuch,  a  Baltimore  physi- 
cian, was  shot  and  killed  in  Lancaster  County,  Penn- 
sylvania, by  a  party  of  armed  negroes  while  attempt- 
ing to  carry  off  a  fugitive  slave;  and,  although  more 
than  thirty  persons  were  arrested,  none  could  be  con- 
victed.    In  Syracuse,  New  York,  a  negro  named  Jerry 

486 


THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

McHenry,  held  in  jail  for  trial  under  the  law,  was 
rescued  by  a  party  headed  by  Gerrit  Smith,  a  promi- 
nent abolitionist  and  later  a  member  of  Congress, 
and  Rev.  Samuel  J.  May,  and  was  aided  in  making 
his  escape  to  Canada.  A  raid  upon  a  settlement  of 
fugitives  in  Michigan  by  an  armed  party  from  Ken- 
tucky was  forcibly  resisted,  the  Kentuckians  being 
arrested  and  put  on  trial  for  kidnapping,  and,  al- 
though all  were  acquitted,  their  purpose  was  foiled. 
These  were  but  a  few  instances  out  of  many.  There 
were,  of  course,  successful  attempts  to  recover  run- 
aways under  the  law,  but  in  most  such  instances  the 
expense  incurred  was  ruinous.  The  most  famous 
case,  perhaps,  was  that  of  Anthony  Burns,  who  was 
held  in  Boston  in  spite  of  an  attempt  to  rescue  him, 
and  after  a  trial  before  the  United  States  commission- 
er was  remanded  to  his  captors,  and  escorted  to  a 
revenue-cutter  in  the  harbor  through  streets  guarded 
by  i  ioo  troops  and  the  entire  police  force  of  the  city. 
Well  might  the  Richmond  Enquirer  say,  "  A  few  more 
such  victories  and  the  South  is  undone." 

These  were  the  violent  outbursts  on  the  surface. 
A  secret  but  more  effectual  nullification  of  the  ob- 
noxious law  was  worked  by  the  "underground  rail- 
road." Throughout  the  North  there  had  for  years 
been  many  persons,  white  and  colored,  who  did  not 
hesitate  to  aid  fleeing  negroes  in  their  dangerous 
progress  from  the  border  States  to  Canada.  The 
fugitive  -  slave  law  hardened  this  desultory  aid  into 
something  resembling  a  system.  Various  "routes," 
or  "lines,"  with  "stations"  at  convenient  distances, 
speedily  developed  under  the  energetic,  but  secret, 
agitation  of  radical  antislavery  advocates.  Houses, 
barns,  sheds,  and  thickets  ^served  as  shelters  where 

487 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  fugitives  were  fed  and  cared  for  until  opportunity 
offered  to  convoy  them,  usually  at  night,  on  the  next 
stage  of  their  journey.  The  location  of  the  stations 
could  easily  be  ascertained  by  the  negro,  and  a  fugi- 
tive who  succeeded  in  reaching  one  of  them  was 
pretty  sure  of  accomplishing  the  remainder  of  his 
journey  in  safety.  It  is  improbable  that  there  was 
in  this  movement  anything  resembling  a  formal  or- 
ganization, but  those  who  participated  in  it  were,  as 
a  rule,  well  enough  known  in  their  communities,  and 
often,  as  in  the  case  of  Levi  Coffin  (a  merchant  of 
Newport,  Indiana),  of  high  standing  in  business  or 
professional  life.  The  work  had  all  the  fascination 
of  unlawful  and  secret  enterprise,  and  its  dangers  as 
well,  for  fine  and  imprisonment  were  heavily  meted 
out  to  such  "agents"  as  were  from  time  to  time  de- 
tected; but  neither  danger  nor  punishment  could 
avail  to  stop  a  work  which  seemed  to  most  of  those 
engaged  in  it  purely  a  work  of  humanity. 

Like  all  such  secret  enterprises,  the  "underground 
railroad  "  obtained,  in  the  popular  mind,  an  importance 
greater  than  its  achievements  warranted.  The  number 
of  slaves  who  succeeded  in  making  good  their  escape 
either  to  Canada  or  to  the  free  States  is  unknown, 
but  contemporary  popular  estimates,  both  northern 
and  southern,  were  doubtless  greatly  exaggerated. 
According  to  the  United  States  census  of  i860,  only 
ion  slaves  escaped  from  their  masters  in  1850,  and 
in  i860  this  total  had  fallen  to  803,  or  about  one- 
thirtieth  of  one  per  cent,  of  the  entire  slave  popula- 
tion. A  southern  Congressman,  Clingman,  on  the 
other  hand,  estimated  the  number  of  fugitives  in  the 
North  at  thirty  thousand,  and  their  value  at  fifteen 
million  dollars.     It  was  the  growing  volume  of  op- 

488 


THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

position  to  a  system  which  could  place  in  the  statute 
book  such  a  law  as  the  fugitive- slave  act,  and  not 
the  number  of  breaches  of  that  law,  that  constituted 
the  gravest  menace  to  slavery  and  slave  property. 

Then,  in  1852,  came  the  publication  of  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin.  In  no  sense  a  great  literary  perform- 
ance, nor  yet  an  accurate  picture  of  the  average  life 
of  the  slave,  the  simple  pathos  of  Mrs.  Stowe's  nar- 
rative, appealing  to  a  public  mind  long  wrought  upon 
by  the  slavery  agitation,  made  a  profound  impres- 
sion. The  success  of  the  book  was  prodigious.  Three 
thousand  copies  were  sold  on  the  day  of  publication, 
three  hundred  thousand  within  a  year.  It  was  trans- 
lated into  many  foreign  languages,  and  is  still,  not- 
withstanding the  disappearance  of  the  issues  which 
gave  it  birth,  a  widely  popular  book.  Of  all  the 
blows  which  slavery  received,  none  was  so  great  as 
that  delivered  by  this  tale  of  "  life  among  the  lowly." 
Of  course  it  was  denounced  as  slanderous  and  un- 
true, a  gross  misrepresentation  of  facts;  and  while 
the  story  doubtless  dwells  upon  what  was  possible 
rather  than  upon  what  was  of  everyday  occurrence, 
the  publication  of  the  "Key"  showed,  sufficient  his- 
torical ground  for  the  details  of  the  picture.  Thou- 
sands of  youths  who  wept  over  the  story  in  1852  were 
voters  in  1856  and  i860,  and  they  did  not  forget  the 
book  which  had  stirred  them  as,  perhaps,  no  other 
book  ever  stirred  any  people  anywhere. 

It  was,  indeed,  a  curious  spectacle  which  the 
United  States  for  a  few  years  presented.  The  section 
which,  twenty  years  before,  had  vigorously  applaud- 
ed Jackson's  stand  against  nullification  was  now  it- 
self virtually  nullifying  a  federal  statute,  and  deny- 
ing to  the  South  the  benefits  of  a  law  which  at  least 
32  489 


HISTORY    OP    THE    UNITED    STATES 

had  been  validly  enacted;  and  there  was  no  Jackson 
to  say  them  nay.  Nor  were  connivance  and  mob 
violence  the  only  methods  of  resistance  employed. 
Before  i860  nearly  every  northern  State  had  passed 
some  kind  of  "personal  liberty"  law  for  the  special 
protection  of  fugitive  slaves.  Some  of  these  laws 
granted  to  the  alleged  fugitives  the  right  of  jury 
trial,  some  the  privilege  of  testifying  in  their  own  be- 
half, while  others  forbade  State  officers  to  aid  in  the 
enforcement  of  federal  statutes.  In  the  face  of  the 
deepening  resentment  of  the  North  at  the  aggressive 
championship  of  slavery  by  the  South,  questions  of 
constitutionality,  consistency,  and  State  comity  were 
not  regarded.  Few  denied  that  the  fugitive  -  slave 
act  was  good  law,  but  fewer  still  believed  that  the 
law  itself  was  good. 

The  effects  of  the  compromise  measures  of  1850  on 
the  Presidential  campaign  of  1852  were  marked. 
While  the  Whigs  lost  the  support  of  the  Free-Soil  and 
abolition  vote,  the  Democrats,  generally  accepting 
the  compromise  settlement,  became  once  more  a 
united  party.  The  most  prominent  Democratic  com- 
petitor for  the  nomination  was  Cass,  but  there  was 
early  fear  of  another  "dark  horse."  For  the  Whigs 
to  nominate  Webster  would  be  to  alienate  a  large 
section  of  the  party  which  had  already  repudiated 
Fillmore;  and  General  Scott,  whose  opinion  of  the 
compromise  was  unknown,  began  to  be  favorably 
mentioned.  In  each  case  the  expected  happened. 
The  Democratic  convention  at  Baltimore,  on  the 
forty-ninth  ballot,  nominated  Franklin  Pierce,  of 
New  Hampshire,  with  William  R.  King,  of  Alabama, 
as  candidate  for  Vice-president.  A  few  days  later, 
in  the  same  city,  the  Whigs  after  fifty-three  ballots 

490 


THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

nominated  Scott,  the  candidate  for  Vice-president 
being  William  A.  Graham,  of  North  Carolina.  The 
platforms  of  both  parties  approved  the  compromise 
measures,  including  by  express  mention  the  fugitive- 
slave  law,  pledged  the  party  to  the  strict  enforce- 
ment of  the  acts,  and  deprecated  further  agitation 
of  the  slavery  question.  A  new  party,  the  Free-Soil 
Democrats,  nominated  for  President  John  P.  Hale, 
of  New  Hampshire,  on  a  platform  which  denounced 
slavery  as  "a  sin  against  God  and  a  crime  against 
man,"  and  demanded  the  "  immediate  and  total  re- 
peal" of  the  fugitive  -  slave  law.  The  uneventful 
campaign  which  followed  ended  in  overwhelming  de- 
feat for  the  Whigs.  Pierce  and  King  received  254 
electoral  votes  to  42  for  Scott  and  Graham,  while 
the  popular  vote  for  the  Democratic  candidates  show- 
ed a  majority  of  158,227  over  the  combined  opposi- 
tion. 

"  I  fervently  hope  that  the  question  is  at  rest,  and 
that  no  sectional  or  ambitious  or  fanatical  excite- 
ment may  again  threaten  the  durability  of  our  in- 
stitutions or  obscure  the  light  of  our  prosperty." 
So  spoke  President  Pierce  in  his  inaugural  address, 
March  4,  1853.  If  such  were  really  the  confident 
hope  of  the  President,  he  was  sadly  deceived,  for  his 
administration  was  hardly  launched  before  the  storm 
once  more  broke.  On  December  14,  1853,  nine 
days  after  the  meeting  of  the  Thirty-third  Congress, 
Senator  Dodge,  of  Iowa,  introduced  a  bill  to  organ- 
ize the  Territory  of  Nebraska.  It  was  not  the  first 
time  that  such  a  proposition  had  been  made.  The 
vast  region  between  3 6°  30'  and  490  on  the  south 
and  north  and  the  Missouri  River  and  the  Rocky 
Mountains  on  the  east  and  west,  was  unorganized  pub- 

491 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

lie  domain.  It  had  been  traversed  by  several  ex- 
ploring parties,  was  inhabited  by  wandering  tribes 
of  Indians,  and  was  popularly  supposed  to  be  a  desert. 
The  emigrants  who  had  struggled  across  it  on  their 
way  to  California  and  Oregon  had  seen  little  in  it  to 
attract  them.  Since  1844,  however,  the  question  of 
organizing  some  part  of  the  country  as  a  Territory 
had  been  more  or  less  regularly  before  Congress,  and 
a  bill  for  the  purpose  passed  the  House  in  February, 

1853- 

On  January  4,  1854,  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  of  Illi- 
nois, chairman  of  the  Senate  Committee  on  Terri- 
tories, reported  a  substitute  for  Dodge's  bill,  ex- 
tending to  the  proposed  Territory  the  provisions 
regarding  slavery  which  had  been  incorporated  in  the 
New  Mexico  and  Utah  acts  of  1850.  This  was  a  sud- 
den raising  again  of  the  slavery  question,  for  which 
neither  the  South  nor  the  North  was  prepared.  As 
it  was  becoming  clear  that  neither  New  Mexico  nor 
Utah  was  likely  to  have  slavery,  the  provision  of 
Douglas's  bill  was  unsatisfactory  to  the  South,  while 
the  strong  Free -Soil  sentiment  in  the  free  States 
made  it  equally  unacceptable  to  the  North.  Dixon, 
of  Kentucky,  a  Democrat,  immediately  proposed  an 
amendment  exempting  the  new  Territory  from  the 
operation  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  to  which 
Charles  Sumner,  of  Massachusetts,  a  Free-Soiler,  re- 
plied with  an  amendment  extending  the  Missouri 
Compromise  to  the  Territory.  Douglas  shortly  sub- 
mitted further  amendments  to  the  bill  of  the  com- 
mittee, "changing  the  southern  boundary  from  360 
30'  to  370,  providing  for  two  territories  instead  of 
one,  and  declaring  the  Missouri  Compromise  inopera- 
tive in  the  new  territories,  on  the  ground  that  it  had 

492 


THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

been  superseded  by  the  compromise  measures  of 
1850."  *  On  February  6th  a  further  amendment 
declared  the  Missouri  Compromise  to  be  ''incon- 
sistent" with  the  legislation  of  1850,  while  on  the 
next  day  the  Missouri  Compromise  was  declared  "  in- 
operative and  void"  because  "inconsistent  with  the 
principle  of  non-intervention  by  Congress  with  sla- 
very in  the  States  and  Territories"  as  recognized  by 
the  legislation  of  1850,  "  it  being  the  true  intent  and 
meaning  of  this  act  not  to  legislate  slavery  into  any 
Territory  or  State,  nor  to  exclude  it  therefrom,  but 
to  leave  the  people  thereof  perfectly  free  to  form  and 
regulate  their  domestic  institutions  in  their  own  way. 
subject  only  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States." 
In  this  form  the  bill,  on  March  4th,  passed  the 
Senate. 

The  House,  meanwhile,  had  had  under  considera- 
tion a  similar  bill,  reported  by  Richardson,  of  Illi- 
nois, on  January  31st.  Although  this  bill  did  not 
come  formally  before  the  House  until  May  8th,  one 
or  other  of  the  two  bills,  and  the  general  subject 
to  which  they  related,  were  discussed-  almost  daily 
from  the  middle  of  February  to  the  last  of  April. 
On  March  21st  the  Senate  bill  was  set  aside,  and 
on  May  2 2d  the  House  bill,  substantially  identical 
with  the  bill  of  the  Senate,  passed.  Four  days  later 
the  Senate,  under  the  lead  of  Douglas,  passed  the  bill 
without  a  division,  and  on  the  30th  it  received  the 
approval  of  the  President. 

The  debate  which  attended  the  Kansas-Nebraska 
bill  is  without  parallel  in  the  history  of  Congress. 
Almost  every  phase  of  the  slavery  question  was  dis- 

^acDonald,  Select  Documents,  396.  The  northern  boundary- 
was  430  30'. 

493 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

i 

cussed,  often  at  great  length,  the  debate  forming,  in 
this  respect,  an  epitome  of  the  history  of  the  subject. 
Principally,  however,  discussion  centred  around  the 
doctrines  of  "  popular  sovereignty"  and  the  constitu- 
tional right  to  restrict  slavery  in  a  Territory.     There 
was  intense  opposition.     Three  thousand  New  Eng- 
land ministers  signed  a  petition  against  the  bill,  and 
Sumner,    Chase,    Benton,    Wade,    and  Giddings   de- 
nounced it  in  unmeasured  terms.     The  majority  of 
southern  members  were  at  first  indifferent,   but  a 
small  group,  popularly  known  as  "fire-eaters,"  went 
further  than  Douglas  and  demanded  the  omission  of 
the  popular  sovereignty  provision.     As  the  debate 
went  on  it  was  marked  by  increasing  violence,  with 
frequent  recrimination  and  personal  attack.    Douglas, 
familiarly  called  the  "little  giant,"  was  easily  the  in- 
tellectual leader  of  the  Democrats,  and  he  forced  the 
original  measure  through  the    Senate  with  a  brutal 
strength  and  vigor  which  often  accorded  ill  with  the 
dignity  of  a  great  deliberative  assembly.     There  has 
been  much  speculation  as  to  his  reasons  for  thus  tear- 
ing open  again*  the  slavery  question.     He  doubtless 
believed  sincerely  in  the  principle  and  expediency  of 
the  bill,  and  he  may  have  fancied  that  its  success 
would  win  for  him  the   coveted  Presidential  chair. 
For  the  moment,  however,  he  became,  in  the  minds 
of  antislavery  men,  the  living  embodiment  of  brute 
force  in  the  policy  of  slavery  extension.    Legislatures 
and   mass  -  meetings   throughout  the  North   passed 
resolutions  condemning  the  measure,  and  indignant 
citizens  in  Ohio  and  Massachusetts  burned  or  hanged 
its  author  in  effigy;  but  to  no  purpose.     Little  did 
Douglas  foresee,  however,  the  storm  he  had  raised. 
As  the  members  of  the  Senate  left  the  Capitol  in  the 

494 


THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

early  morning  of  March  4th,  after  an  all-night  session, 
Chase  said  to  Sumner,  referring  to  the  boom  of  can- 
non from  the  navy-yard,  "They  celebrate  a  present 
victory,  but  the  echoes  they  awake  will  never  rest 
until  slavery  itself  shall  die."  l 

With  the  passage  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  act  the 
political  history  of  slavery  in  the  United  States  en- 
tered upon  its  final  stage.  The  era  of  compromise 
gave  way  to  the  era  of  local  option.  If  the  South 
failed  here,  there  apparently  remained  to  it  only  the 
dark  alternative  of  submission  or  war. 

It  was  soon  seen  that  there  would  be  no  slavery 
in  Nebraska.  Kansas,  however,  presented  in  its 
eastern  portion  the  same  climatic  conditions  as  west- 
ern Missouri;  and  as  the  fifty  thousand  slaves  in 
Missouri  were  estimated,  for  the  purposes  of  southern 
argument,  to  be  worth  twenty -five  million  dollars, 
the  control  of  Kansas  was  a  prize  worth  fighting  for. 
The  South  was  first  in  the  field.  Within  a  month 
from  the  passage  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  act,  a  con- 
siderable number  of  Missourians  had  moved  across 
the  border  and  taken  possession  of  some  of  the  best 
land.  Before  long  they  were  joined  by  recruits  from 
other  slave  States,  strong  efforts  being  made  to  in- 
duce emigration.  It  was  observed,  however,  that 
most  of  those  who  came  were  young  men  without 
family  or  property  ties,  eager  for  adventure,  rather 
than  for  colonization,  and  that  few  brought  their 
slaves.  The  North,  on  the  other  hand,  accepting  in 
good  faith  the  unwelcome  situation,  set  itself  serious- 
ly to  the  task  of  making  Kansas  a  free  State  by  es- 
tablishing in  the  Territory  a  preponderant  population 

1  Rhodes,  United  States,  I.,  476. 
495 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

of  free-State  men  and  women.  Under  the  lead  of  the 
New  England  Emigrant  Aid  Society,  formed  at  Wor- 
cester by  Eli  Thayer  and  others,  and  of  similar  asso- 
ciations elsewhere,  the  organization  and  equipment 
of  emigrant  parties  was  zealously  entered  upon,  and 
thousands  of  free-State  settlers  were  soon  wending 
their  way  to  Kansas.  When,  a  little  later,  the  Mis- 
sourians  declared  a  blockade  of  the  Missouri  River, 
the  emigrants  took  the  overland  route  through  Iowa 
and  Nebraska. 

The  two  factions  were  soon  in  collision.  The  elec- 
tion for  the  choice  of  a  Territorial  delegate,  in  Novem- 
ber, 1854,  was  carried  by  fraud,  organized  bands  of 
Missouri  "border  ruffians"  taking  possession  of  the 
polls  and  furnishing  the  requisite  majority  for  Whit- 
field, the  proslavery  candidate.  The  same  outrage 
was  shortly  repeated.  On  the  morning  of  March 
30,  1855,  the  day  appointed  for  the  election  of 
members  of  the  first  Territorial  legislature,  there  ap- 
peared in  eastern  Kansas  "an  unkempt,  sundried, 
blatant,  picturesque  mob  of  five  thousand  men  with 
guns  upon  their  shoulders,  revolvers  .stuffing  their 
belts,  bowie-knives  protruding  from  their  boot-tops, 
and  generous  rations  of  whiskey  in  their  wagons."1 
The  intruders  took  possession  of  most  of  the  polling 
places  and  furnished  more  than  three-fourths  of  the 
sixty-three  hundred  votes  returned.  The  legislature 
thus  elected  met  at  Pawnee  in  July,  adopted  the 
Missouri  code  of  laws  en  bloc  for  the  new  Territory, 
with  the  addition  of  stringent  provisions  for  the  pro- 
tection of  slavery,  and  drew  up  a  State  constitution. 
In  September  the  Free-State  party,  whose  represent- 

1  Spring,  Kansas,  44. 
496 


THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

atives  had  found  it  expedient  to  withdraw  from  the 
Pawnee  legislature,  held  a  convention  at  Topeka, 
repudiated  the  Pawnee  legislature  and  its  acts,  or- 
dered another  election  for  delegate  to  Congress, 
draughted  a  free-State  constitution,  and  in  January, 
1856,  elected  Free-State  officers.  Kansas  thus  had 
two  rival  governments,  one  depending  for  support 
on  the  "border  ruffians,"  the  other  representing  the 
majority  of  the  bona  -  fide  settlers  in  the  Territory. 
Open  war,  with  its  attendant  incidents  of  murder, 
arson,  and  pillage,  speedily  followed.  On  May  21, 
1856,  an  armed  mob  of  proslavery  men,  led  by  a 
United  States  deputy  marshal  and  a  county  sheriff, 
visited  Lawrence,  the  headquarters  of  the  Free-State 
party,  burned  the  hotel,  and  sacked  the  town. 

In  Congress,  as  well  as  in  the  country,  "bleeding 
Kansas"  was  the  absorbing  issue.  The  party  com- 
plexion of  the  Thirty-fourth  Congress,  which  met  in 
December,  1855,  was  at  first  hopelessly  confused.  In 
the  House,  where  the  "Anti-Nebraska  men,"  made 
up  principally  of  Whigs  who  had  repudiated  the 
Kansas-Nebraska  act,  had  a  majority,  a  select  com- 
mittee appointed  to  investigate  the  troubles  in  Kan- 
sas reported,  July  1,  1856,  by  a  majority  vote,  that 
each  election  thus  far  held  in  the  Territory  had  been 
"carried  by  organized  invasion  from  the  State  of 
Missouri,"  that  "the  alleged  Territorial  legislature 
was  an  illegally  constituted  body,  and  that  "in  the 
present  condition  of  the  Territory  a  fair  election  can- 
not be  held  without  a  new  census,  a  stringent  and 
well-guarded  election  law,  the  selection  of  impartial 
judges,  and  the  presence  of  United  States  troops  at 
every  place  of  election."  Such,  however,  was  not 
the  view  taken  by  President  Pierce.     In  a  special 

497 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

message  to  Congress  on  January  24th,  the  pro- 
slavery  legislature  was  endorsed,  and  the  attempt 
of  the  Free-State  party  to  form  a  State  government 
denounced  as  revolutionary.  Troops  were  shortly 
placed  at  the  disposal  of  Shannon,  the  proslavery 
governor,  to  maintain  order.  Pierce,  with  all  his 
assumption  of  high  moral  tone,  could  see  nothing  in 
the  Kansas  troubles  save  the  bare  legal  issue  of  obe- 
dience to  law,  and  chose  to  busy  himself  with  legal 
quibbles  rather  than  to  act  a  more  decisive  part.  A 
bill  to  admit  Kansas  as  a  State  under  the  Topeka  con- 
stitution was  passed  by  the  House  but  rejected  by 
the  Senate,  and  the  legislature  which  attempted  to 
meet  under  the  constitution  was  dispersed  by  United 
States  troops.  Thanks  to  the  soldiers,  who  per- 
formed their  unwelcome  duty  with  much  discretion, 
the  President  was  able  to  inform  Congress  in  Decem- 
ber, 1856,  that  tranquillity  had  been  restored;  but  he 
failed  to  point  out  that  it  was  an  armed  peace,  and 
his  review  of  the  situation  was  so  contrived  as  to 
place  the  chief  responsibility  for  the  disorders  upon 
the  North. 

No  further  effort  for  statehood  was  made  until  Sep- 
tember, 1857,  when  a  convention  at  Lecompton  drew 
up  a  proslavery  constitution,  which  was  adopted  in 
December  by  a  large  majority.  Two  weeks  later, 
however,  the  Free-State  party,  which  had  got  control 
of  the  legislature,  resubmitted  the  constitution,  with 
the  result  that  it  was  rejected  by  a  majority  of  over 
ten  thousand.  An  attempt  to  force  Kansas  into  the 
Union  with  this  rejected  constitution  failed.  A  third 
constitution  prohibiting  slavery  was  ratified  by  popu- 
lar vote  in  October,  1859,  but  it  was  not  until  January 
29, 1 86 1 ,  that  Kansas  was  numbered  among  the  States. 

498 


THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

In  Congress  the  violence  of  controversy  reached  its 
climax  in  the  assault  on  Charles  Sumner.  Sumner 
had  been  chosen  Senator  from  Massachusetts  shortly 
after  Webster  became  Secretary  of  State  under  Fill- 
more. Handsome,  accomplished,  an  eloquent  speak- 
er and  easy  writer,  enjoying  a  wide  acquaintance  at 
home  and  abroad,  Sumner  had  early  become  one  of 
the  most  prominent  leaders  of  the  antislavery  forces. 
Splendid  as  was  his  oratorical  power,  however,  he 
did  not  scruple  to  indulge  freely  in  personalities  in  de- 
bate, and  the  resentment  of  those  who  suffered  at  his 
hands  was  deepened  to  anger  as,  with  the  growing 
excitement  over  the  Kansas  troubles,  his  attacks  upon 
the  South  became  more  vehement.  In  a  speech  on 
the  " Crime  against  Kansas,"  May  19  and  20,  1856, 
Sumner  spoke  with  unusual  severity  of  several  south- 
ern leaders,  including  Senator  Butler,  of  South  Caro- 
lina. For  this  he  was  assaulted  in  his  seat,  after  the 
adjournment  of  the  Senate,  by  Preston  S.  Brooks,  a 
Representative  from  South  Carolina  and  a  nephew 
of  Butler,  and  beaten  about  the  head  and  shoulders 
with  a  loaded  cane  until  he  became  insensible.  Sum- 
ner's injuries  were  so  serious  that  it  was  not  until  the 
end  of  1859  that  he  was  able  to  resume  his  seat. 
Brooks  was  censured  by  the  House  and  resigned,  but 
was  at  once  re-elected  by  his  constituents.  The  South 
did  not  approve,  but  neither  did  it  condemn.  The 
protest  of  Massachusetts  was  silent  but  telling :  Sum- 
ner^ chair  was  left  vacant  until  such  time  as  he 
should  again  be  able  to  fill  it. 

It  was  inevitable  that  slavery  should  dominate 
the  Presidential  election  of  1856.  The  party  situa- 
tion was  extraordinarily  complicated.  The  com- 
promise of  1850  and  the   Kansas-Nebraska  act  had 

499 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

split  both  the  Democratic  and  the  Whig  parties  along 
sectional  lines.  Although  Douglas's  doctrine  of  "  pop- 
ular sovereignty"  was  accepted  by  the  Democratic 
party,  many  northern  Democrats  rejected  it.  The 
control  of  the  party,  however,  was  still  in  the  hands 
of  the  South.  The  Whig  party,  unable  to  take 
ground  against  slavery,  sought  peace  in  declaring  the 
issue  settled;  and  with  that  declaration  it  shortly 
found  its  grave,  dying,  as  was  said,  of  an  effort  to 
swallow  the  fugitive-slave  law.  In  neither  camp  was 
there  place  for  the  rapidly  growing  number  of  Free- 
Soil  and  antislavery  men.  Then  came  the  Native 
American,  or  "  Know-Nothing, "  party,  with  its  secret, 
oath-bound  organization,  its  demand,  not  even  then 
new  in  our  history,  of  "  America  for  Americans,"  and 
its  ill-concealed  antagonism  to  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  Many  antislavery  Whigs  and  Democrats 
joined  the  "Know-Nothings,"  and  the  success  of  the 
party  in  State  elections,  particularly  in  the  East  and 
South,  was  for  a  time  extraordinary.  What  was 
wanted  was  a  party  which,  standing  firmly  against 
further  extension  of  slavery,  should  champion  against 
the  Democrats  a  loose  construction  of  the  Constitu- 
tion, under  which  alone  slavery  could  be  excluded 
from  the  Territories.  The  need  was  met  in  the  Re- 
publican party,  organized  in  the  West  and  forming 
the  legitimate  successor  of  the  Anti-Nebraska  or- 
ganization. The  growth  of  the  party  had  been  re- 
markable. "  It  got  its  programme  from  the  Free- 
Soilers,  whom  it  bodily  absorbed;  its  radical  and 
aggressive  spirit  from  the  abolitionists,  whom  it  re- 
ceived without  liking;  its  liberal  views  upon  consti- 
tutional questions  from  the  Whigs,  who  constituted 
both  in  numbers  and  in  influence  its  commanding 

500 


J 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 


THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

element ;  and  its  popular  impulse  from  the  Democrats, 
who  did  not  leave  behind  them,  when  they  joined  it, 
their  faith  in  their  old  party  ideals."  ' 

The  Democrats  nominated  James  Buchanan,  of 
Pennsylvania,  late  Minister  to  Great  Britain,  for  Presi- 
dent, and  John  C.  Breckinridge,  of  Kentucky,  for 
Vice-president.  The  platform  reaffirmed  the  strict- 
construction  principles  of  the  party,  championed 
popular  sovereignty  and  the  Kansas-Nebraska  act, 
and  defended  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise. 
The  Know-Nothings  condemned  the  sectionalism  of 
the  Democrats  as  shown  in  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  and  nominated  ex- President  Fillmore, 
whereupon  the  antislavery  delegates  withdrew  and 
nominated  Fremont,  of  California,  whose  political 
career  had  been  too  brief  to  be  condemned.  '  Fill- 
more's nomination  was  shortly  endorsed  by  a  Whig 
convention  at  Baltimore,  on  a  platform  which  de- 
nounced "geographical  parties."  The  Republicans 
met  at  Philadelphia  and  unanimously  nominated 
Fremont,  already  the  nominee  of  the  seceding  Native 
Americans,  and  William  L.  Dayton,  of  New  Jersey. 
The  platform  spoke  with  the  positiveness  of  youth. 
It  denied  the  authority  of  Congress  or  of  a  Territorial 
legislature  to  establish  slavery  in  any  Territory,  de- 
nounced the  conduct  of  the  administration  in  regard 
to  Kansas,  and  demanded  the  immediate  admission 
of  Kansas  as  a  free  State.  The  campaign  on  the  Re- 
publican side  recalled,  in  its  political  clubs,  torch- 
light processions,  and  great  public  meetings,  the 
famous  " log-cabin  and  hard  cider"  campaign  of  1840 ; 
but  the  Republicans  were  not  yet  well  enough  or- 

1  Wilson,  Division  and  Reunion,  188. 
5°i 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

ganized  to  win  in  the  country  at  large.  Buchanan 
and  Breckinridge  received  174  out  of  a  total  of  296 
electoral  votes,  and  a  plurality  of  nearly  five  hundred 
thousand  votes  as  against  Fremont,  the  Republican 
candidate.  There  was  no  longer  either  a  Whig  or  a 
Native  American  party.  But  the  Republicans  had 
polled  1,341,264  votes,  a  phenomenal  success  for  a 
new  party  in  its  first  campaign.  Might  it  not,  four 
years  later,  carry  the  country? 

On  March  6,  1857,  two  days  after  the  inaugura- 
tion of  President  Buchanan,  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States  rendered  its  decision  in  the 
famous  Dred  Scott  case.  Dred  Scott  was  a  negro 
slave  who  had  accompanied  his  owner,  an  army  sur- 
geon, to  Illinois,  and  thence  to  Fort  Snelling,  west  of 
the  Mississippi  and  north  of  3 6°  30',  being  held  as  a 
slave  during  his  residence  in  both  these  regions.  In 
1847,  Scott,  who  had  been  brought  back  to  Missouri, 
brought  suit  in  the  courts  of  that  State  to  recover 
his  freedom  on  the  ground  of  his  residence  in  free  ter- 
ritory; but  the  case  was  lost.  In  1853,  Scott  having 
in  the  mean  time  passed  under  the  control  of  one 
Sandford,  of  New  York,  a  second  suit  was  brought, 
this  time  in  the  United  States  Circuit  Court,  which 
by  appeal  finally  reached  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States,  where  its  importance  caused  it  to  be 
twice  argued.  The  main  question  which  the  court 
was  called  upon  to  decide  was  whether  or  not  a  negro, 
the  descendant  of  African  slaves,  could  become  a 
citizen  of  the  United  States,  and  as  such  be  entitled 
to  sue  in  a  United  States  court.  Chief -justice  Taney, 
in  the  opinion  of  the  court,  held  that  he  could  not; 
that  negroes  such  as  Scott  were  not  included,  and 
were  not  intended  to  be  included,  under  the  term 

502 


THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

" citizens"  in  the  Constitution,  but  were  looked  upon, 
at  the  time  of  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  "  as 
a  subordinate  and  inferior  class  of  beings"  who  had 
been  subjugated  by  the  dominant  race,  and  "  whether 
emancipated  or  not,  yet  remained  subject  to  their 
authority,  and  had  no  rights  or  privileges  but  such 
as  those  who  held  the  power  and  the  government 
might  choose  to  grant  them."  The  Supreme  Court, 
accordingly,  could  take  no  jurisdiction  of  the  case. 

Here  the  court,  having  decided  the  only  question 
before  it,  should  have  stopped.  Taney,  however, 
felt  that  the  occasion  had  at  last  offered  for  settling 
once  for  all,  by  solemn  decision  of  the  highest  tribunal 
in  the  land,  the  vexed  question  of  slavery  in  the  Ter- 
ritories. He  accordingly  proceeded  to  inquire  wheth- 
er, in  case  Scott  could  have  sued  as  a  citizen,  the 
fact  of  his  residence  in  free  territory  would  have  en- 
titled him  to  his  freedom.  Here  again  the  decision 
was  against  him,  the  court  holding  that  since  slaves 
were  property  under  the  Constitution,  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  which  excluded  this  kind  of  property 
from  so  much  of  the  Louisiana  purchase  as  lay  north 
of  360  30',  was  an  unwarranted  interference  with  the 
property  rights  of  the  citizen,  and  therefore  uncon- 
stitutional and  void. 

No  judicial  decision  ever  so  profoundly  stirred  the 
public  mind  as  the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  in 
the  case  of  Dred  Scott.  Whatever  its  legal  soundness 
or  binding  force,  it  was  at  once  seen  to  strike  at  the 
very  foundation  of  the  constitutional  opposition  to 
slavery  extension ;  and  while  the  South  hailed  it  with 
applause  as  opening  all  the  Territories  to  slavery, 
the  antislavery  North  for  the  same  reason  repudiated 
it.     The  court   was  not   a   unit,    however.     Justice 

503 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Curtis,  in  a  masterly  dissenting  opinion,  exposed  the 
illogical  character  of  Taney's  argument,  and  showed 
by  irrefutable  historical  facts  that  free  negroes,  hav- 
ing been  recognized  as  citizens  by  a  number  of  the 
States  at  the  time  the  Constitution  was  framed,  be- 
came by  that  fact  citizens  of  the  United  States  also. 
Curtis 's  opinion,  unquestionably  the  better  law,  was 
enthusiastically  commended  and  widely  circulated 
in  the  North.  But  the  decision  only  widened  the 
more  the  gulf  between  the  sections.  It  had  more  than 
once  been  seriously  proposed  in  Congress  to  dispose 
of  the  slavery  controversy  by  referring  it  to  the 
Supreme  Court,  as  though  a  question  of  morals  or 
politics  could  ever  be  finally  determined  simply  by 
legal  means.  Now  that  the  method  had  been  tried, 
the  refusal  of  a  majority  of  the  people  to  accept  the 
result  showed  how  futile  was  the  hope  of  settlement 
through  such  a  channel. 

There  was  no  further  serious  attempt  to  settle  the 
status  of  slavery  in  the  United  States  by  law.  There 
are  difficulties  which  law  cannot  adjust,  and  from  the 
time  of  the  Dred  Scott  decision  "the  course  of  events 
tends,  with  increasing  rapidity,  to  a  settlement  by 
force."  l  Congress  busied  itself,  indeed,  about  other 
matters.  It  spent  much  time  in  discussing  bills 
granting  homesteads  to  settlers  on  the  public  domain 
and  setting  aside  lands  for  the  support  of  public 
schools.  In  1858  Minnesota  became  a  State,  in  1859 
Oregon.  For  the  most  part,  however,  it  talked  about 
slavery,  with  events  in  Kansas  as  a  text.  Presi- 
dent and  Senate  united,  without  avail,  to  force  upon 
Kansas  the  Lecompton  constitution.     A  House  in- 

1  Johnston,  American  Politics,  181. 
5°4 


THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

vestigating  committee  charged  the  President  with 
bribing  members  of  Congress  and  certain  editors  to 
support  the  Lecompton  bill,  a  charge  which  the  sup- 
porters of  the  administration  vigorously  denied.  In 
Illinois  a  series  of  debates  between  Douglas  and 
Abraham  Lincoln,  both  candidates  for  a  Senatorship, 
over  slavery  and  the  Dred  Scott  case,  attracted  wide 
attention  even  in  the  East,  and  marked  Lincoln  as 
an  able  exponent  of  Republican  doctrine.  There  was 
talk  among  southern  members  of  reopening  the 
African  slave-trade,  although  the  trade  had  continued, 
since  its  formal  prohibition  in  1808,  with  little  actual 
interruption.  There  was  talk,  too,  of  secession,  but 
only  in  the  South  was  the  suggestion  taken  seriously 
to  heart. 

On  the  morning  of  October  18,  1859,  the  news- 
papers startled  the  country  with  the  report  of  a 
midnight  attack  on  the  United  States  arsenal  at 
Harper's  Ferry,  Virginia,  by  a  small  band  of  whites 
and  negroes  led  by  John  Brown.  Brown  had  already 
won  notoriety  in  Kansas  as  the  most  radical  opponent 
of  slavery  among  the  free-State  settlers.  The  wanton 
killing  of  five  free-State  men  by  the  border  ruffians 
had  been  terribly  avenged  by  the  killing,  under 
Brown's  direction,  of  an  equal  number  of  proslavery 
squatters  on  Pottawatomie  Creek.  Now,  with  the 
help  of  friends  in  the  North,  hardly  any  of  whom, 
however,  knew  his  precise  purpose,  he  had  gathered 
near  Harper's  Ferry  a  company  of  eighteen  persons, 
had  seized  the  arsenal,  and  had  kept  up  a  stout  re- 
sistance until  the  arrival  of  a  body  of  marines  from 
the  navy -yard  at  Washington,  under  command  of 
Colonel  Robert  E.  Lee,  when  he  was  quickly  overpow- 
ered. For  the  moment  a  panic  of  fear  seized  upon 
33  S°5 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  South,  where  slave  insurrection  was  of  all  things 
most  to  be  dreaded ;  but  careful  investigation  failed 
to  connect  the  raid  with  anything  which  could  be 
justly  called  a  conspiracy  at  the  North.  On  De- 
cember 2d  Brown  was  hanged,  under  the  laws  of 
Virginia,  for  treason,  conspiracy,  and  murder.  John 
Brown  was  a  fanatic,  narrow,  intense,  bigoted,  but 
with  a  certain  nobility  of  character  which  deeply 
impressed  those  who  knew  him,  and  a  calm  persist- 
ency which  knew  no  fear  and  stopped  at  no  difficulty. 
He  was  convinced  that  slavery  must  be  attacked  by 
force,  and  that  he  was  divinely  commissioned  to  lead 
the  onslaught.  In  the  history  of  the  struggle  for  free- 
dom, his  ill-starred  expedition  stands  alone,  and 
Brown  himself  throughout  his  life  had  but  a  limited 
connection  with  those  whose  ultimate  aim  was  the 
same  as  his.  He  did  not  precipitate  the  Civil  War, 
nor  yet  open  to  the  negro  the  path  to  freedom.  The 
law  could  do  no  less  than  adjudge  him  worthy  of 
death;  but  time,  which  both  clears  and  softens  the 
judgments  of  men,  holds  him  rather  as  a  voice  crying 
in  the  wilderness,  a  prophet  denouncing  wrath  upon 
his  enemies  while  heralding  the  approach  of  a  new 
day. 

The  Harper's  Ferry  episode  was  only  the  most  spec- 
tacular of  the  events  which,  throughout  Buchanan's 
term,  indicated  the  near  approach  of  a  crisis.  The  tech- 
nical legal  right  of  the  South,  under  the  Dred  Scott 
decision,  to  protection  for  its  "peculiar  institution" 
was,  indeed,  unassailable,  but  it  was  in  fact  set  at 
naught  by  the  deepening  moral  hostility  of  the  North 
to  slavery  and  all  its  works.  Neither  side  tried  fur- 
ther to  understand  the  other,  neither  side  any  longer 
seriously  believed  in  the  possibility  of  compromise. 

506 


THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

There  were  no  new  facts  to  adduce,  no  new  argu- 
ments to  urge.  Buchanan,  estimable  in  personal 
character,  grew  daily  more  helpless  in  the  hands  of 
the  slavery  advocates;  while  Douglas,  though  no 
opponent  of  slavery,  broke  with  the  administration 
when  it  tried  to  force  upon  Kansas  the  Lecompton 
constitution,  and  thereby  split  wide  open  the  Demo- 
cratic party,  whose  stronghold  was  in  the  South.  The 
northern  Whigs,  the  Native  Americans,  and  the 
Douglas  Democrats,  agreeing  only  in  love  for  the 
Union  and  dread  of  war,  hoped  still  for  a  peaceful 
settlement.  Only  the  Republicans,  young  and  ag- 
gressive, knew  their  own  minds,  but  even  they  hesi- 
tated to  take  pronounced  ground  or  to  rest  their  ap- 
peal to  the  voters  on  the  slavery  issue  alone.  Plain 
as  the  issue  of  war  seems  to  us,  it  was  not  plain  to 
the  men  of  i860.  Not  even  the  most  radical  op- 
ponents of  the  slave  power  could  easily  bring  them- 
selves to  think  of  war  as  possible. 

The  Democrats  met  in  national  convention  at 
Charleston  in  April,  i860.  The  refusal  of  the  conven- 
tion to  adopt  a  resolution  pledging  the  party  to  "  abide 
by  the  decisions  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States  on  the  question  of  constitutional  law ' '  —  a 
political  doctrine  now  for  the  first  time  championed 
by  the  slave-holding  Democrats — was  followed  by 
the  withdrawal  of  most  of  the  southern  members. 
After  fifty-seven  ballots  had  been  taken  without  the 
choice  of  a  candidate  for  President,  the  convention 
adjourned  to  meet  in  Baltimore  on  June  18th.  The 
seceders  met  in  another  hall  in  Charleston,  adopted 
resolutions  embodying  the  extreme  claims  of  the 
South  regarding  slavery,  and  adjourned  to  meet  in 
Richmond  on  June  nth.     The  regular  convention,  on 

5°7 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

reassembling  in  Baltimore,  nominated  Douglas.  The 
seceders  nominated  John  C.  Breckinridge,  of  Ken- 
tucky, and  Joseph  Lane,  of  Oregon.  Nothing  could 
indicate  more  clearly  than  these  two  sets  of  candidates 
and  resolutions  the  division  in  the  Democratic  ranks. 
On  May  9th  a  convention  of  those  who  could  find  no 
rest  in  either  the  Democratic  or  the  Republican  folds 
met  at  Baltimore,  took  the  name  of  the  Constitutional 
Union  party,  and  nominated  John  Bell,  of  Tennessee, 
and  Edward  Everett,  of  Massachusetts.  The  platform 
declared  for  "the  Constitution  of  the  country,  the 
union  of  the  States,  and  the  enforcement  of  the  laws." 
As  neither  of  these  principles  had  been  denied  by 
either  of  the  opposing  parties,  it  was  not  clear  to 
whom  the  Constitutional  Unionists  particularly  ap- 
pealed. The  Republican  convention  met  at  Chicago 
on  May  16th.  The  platform  denounced  the  course  of 
the  administration  in  Kansas,  asserted  that  "the 
normal  condition  of  all  the  territory  of  the  United 
States  is  that  of  freedom,"  and  demanded  the  im- 
mediate admission  of  Kansas  as  a  free  State,  adding 
to  these  an  endorsement  of  a  protective'  tariff  and 
"the  maintenance  inviolate  of  the  rights  of  the 
States,  and  especially  the  right  of  each  State  to  or- 
der and  control  its  own  domestic  institutions  accord- 
ing to  its  own  judgment  exclusively."  The  candi- 
dates chosen  were :  for  President,  Abraham  Lincoln,  of 
Illinois,  and  for  Vice-president,  Hannibal  Hamlin,  of 
Maine. 

The  campaign  was  exciting,  and,  on  the  part  of  the 
Republicans,  enthusiastic.  Yet  it  was  clear  that  a 
great  change  had  come  over  the  face  of  American 
politics.  The  Union  had  become  sectional;  and  the 
Republicans,  with  both  of  their  candidates  represent- 

508 


THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

ing  northern  States,  and  one  of  them  the  extreme 
northeastern  State  of  Maine,  were  almost  aggressively 
a  sectional,  and  not  a  national,  party.  Thousands  of 
copies  of  Hinton  R.  Helper's  Impending  Crisis,  a 
southern  book  published  in  1857  to  show  the  eco- 
nomic evils  of  slavery,  were  circulated  as  a  campaign 
document.  Lincoln  was  a  popular  candidate  with 
young  men  and  with  the  conservative  opponents  of 
slavery.  The  antislavery  sentiment  alone,  how- 
ever, was  not  relied  upon  to  win  support  for  the  Re- 
publican ticket,  and  the  managers  appealed  skil- 
fully to  the  protectionist  sentiment  of  States  like 
Pennsylvania  for  endorsement.  The  vote  was  in- 
structive. Lincoln  received  180  electoral  votes  out 
of  a  total  of  303.  The  Republican  popular  vote, 
however,  was  but  1,866,352  in  a  total  vote  of  4,682,- 
069.  It  was  obvious  that  only  the  divided  opposi- 
tion had  saved  the  Republicans  from  defeat,  and 
that  unless  the  advocates  of  slavery  forced  the  issue 
the  party  would  not  be  strong  enough  to  carry  out 
any  radical  policy. 

But  the  radical  South  forced  the  issue.  It  recog- 
nized that  the  election  of  Lincoln  meant  the  exclu- 
sion of  slavery  from  the  Territories,  and  the  challenge 
thus  offered  was  promptly  accepted.  South  Caro- 
lina was  the  only  State  in  which  Presidential  electors 
were  still  chosen  by  the  legislature.  The  legislat- 
ure of  that  State,  meeting  on  November  5,  i860, 
to  choose  the  electors,  remained  in  session  until  the 
result  of  the  election  was  known.  It  then  imme- 
diately called  a  convention  "to  consider  the  question 
of  withdrawing  from  the  Union."  The  convention 
met  December  17  th,  and  on  the  20th  passed  the 
fatal  ordinance  of  secession.     The  Representatives  of 

5°9 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  State  in  Congress  at  once  withdrew.  By  Feb- 
ruary i,  1 86 1,  similar  ordinances  had  been  pass- 
ed by  Mississippi,  Florida,  Alabama,  Georgia,  Loui- 
siana, and  Texas.  On  February  8th  delegates  from 
the  seceded  States  met  at  Montgomery  and  adopted 
a  provisional  constitution,  replaced  by  a  perma- 
nent constitution  March  nth.  The  constitution  was 
in  most  respects  a  copy  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  but  with  changes  which  embodied 
strict  construction  and  recognized  slavery.  Jeffer- 
son Davis,  of  Mississippi,  was  chosen  president,  and 
Alexander  H.  Stephens,  of  Georgia,  vice-president 
of  the  new  Confederate  States  of  America.  Davis 
was  undoubtedly  the  ablest  statesman  the  South 
had  produced  since  Calhoun,  and  the  acknowledged 
leader  of  the  aggressive  South.  Stephens,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  in  principles  a  Whig,  and  an  earnest 
opponent  of  secession,  but  he  "went  with  his  State," 
as  did  thousands  of  others  like  him  when  the  mo- 
mentous decision  was  made. 

The  organization  of  secession  moved  with  a  rapid- 
ity which  to  the  North  was  amazing.  As  fast  as  the 
States  passed  ordinances  of  secession  the  forts,  ar- 
senals, custom-houses,  and  other  federal  property 
within  their  limits  were  seized,  except  Fort  Sumter, 
Fort  Pickens,  and  the  fortifications  at  Key  West. 
The  southern  arsenals  had  been  lately  furnished  with 
full  supplies  of  arms  by  the  Secretary  of  War,  so  that 
the  Confederacy  came  into  possession  at  once  of  a 
large  part  of  the  military  equipment  of  the  federal 
government.  In  Texas  more  that  half  the  army 
of  the  United  States  was  turned  over  by  General 
Twiggs,  with  all  its  equipment,  to  the  State.  The 
organization  of  a  Confederate  army  and  navy  was 

5io 


THE    PRELUDE    TO    THE    CIVIL    WAR 

promptly  begun,  while  commissioners  were  appoint- 
ed to  treat  with  the  government  at  Washington 
for  a  division  of  national  property  and  other  obli- 
gations. 

While  these  revolutionary  steps  were  being  taken 
in  the  South,  Congress  and  the  President  looked  on 
in  apparently  helpless  apathy.  Buchanan,  acting  on 
the  advice  of  his  Attorney-General,  Black,  could  only 
declare  that  while  no  State  had  any  constitutional 
right  to  secede,  he  could  do  nothing  to  prevent  se- 
cession in  case  a  State  chose  that  course,  for  Con- 
gress could  not  constitutionally  wage  war  against  a 
State.  As  to  the  seizure  of  national  property,  he 
was  equally  impotent,  since  federal  troops  could  be 
used  only  to  sustain  a  federal  official  in  the  enforce- 
ment of  law,  and  all  the  federal  officials  in  the  South 
had  resigned.  A  show  of  spirit  in  a  special  message 
of  January  8,  1861,  was  offset  by  the  failure  of  an 
attempt  to  reinforce  Fort  Sumter,  in  Charleston  Har- 
bor. Congress  listened  to  the  farewell  words  of  the 
retiring  southern  members,  debated  numerous  prop- 
ositions for  compromise,  and  submitted  to  the  States 
a  constitutional  amendment  denying  to  Congress  the 
right  to  interfere  with  the  domestic  institutions  of 
any  State.  Only  three  States  accepted  the  amend- 
ment. A  peace  congress,  assembled  at  the  sugges- 
tion of  Virginia  and  presided  over  by  ex-President 
Tyler,  proposed  an  elaborate  constitutional  amend- 
ment which  Congress  left  without  action.  The  only 
positive  legislation  of  importance  was  the  admission 
of  Kansas  as  a  State  and  the  organization  of  the 
Territories  of  Colorado,  Dakota,  and  Nevada  with- 
out mention  of  slavery. 

Such  was  the  situation  when,  on  March  4,  1861, 

5" 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

under  the  escort  of  all  the  troops  that  General  Scott 
could  collect  at  Washington,  the  inaugural  proces- 
sion moved  from  Willard's  Hotel  to  the  Capitol,  and 
Abraham  Lincoln  took  the  oath  of  office  as  President 
of  the  United  States. 


XXII 
THE    WAR    FOR    THE     UNION 

IN  his  inaugural  address  President  Lincoln  declared 
that  he  had  "no  purpose,  directly  or  indirectly,  to 
interfere  with  the  institution  of  slavery  where  it 
exists,"  but  that  the  power  given  to  him  by  the  Con- 
stitution would  be  used  to  enforce  the  laws  and  pre- 
serve the  Union.  To  this  purpose  he  steadily  ad- 
hered. However  logical  a  consequence  of  war  the 
abolition  of  slavery  might  be,  however  intimate  the 
historical  connection  between  slavery  and  secession, 
it  was  primarily  to  prevent  secession  rather  than  to 
abolish  slavery  that  the  great  Civil  War  was  fought. 
Nor  was  it  the  war  that  legally  destroyed  slavery. 
The  larger  part  of  the  slaves  were  emancipated,  as  a 
legitimate  military  measure,  before  the  war  was  over, 
but  not  until  the  Constitution  had  been  amended 
did  slavery  itself  disappear.  No  man  in  public  life 
would  have  gone  further  to  prevent  a  rupture  be- 
tween North  and  South  than  Lincoln,  as  none  would 
have  dealt  more  tenderly  with  the  South  after  Ap- 
pomattox ;  yet  none  saw  more  clearly,  or  kept  in  view 
more  steadily,  the  precise  ground  on  which  the  con- 
test must  for  a  time  be  carried  on. 

It  was  highly  important,  as  a  matter  of  policy, 
that  the  federal  government  should,  if  possible, 
maintain   its   rights   unimpaired   without  being  the 

5i3 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

first  to  use  force.  If  there  was  to  be  war,  it  would 
be  greatly  to  the  advantage  of  the  North  could  the 
first  act  of  aggression  come  from  the  South.  Occa- 
sion soon  offered.  Fort  Sumter,  in  Charleston  Harbor, 
was  the  only  fort  in  the  northern  part  of  the  Con- 
federacy remaining  in  federal  hands.  An  attempt 
to  relieve  it  in  January  had  been  unsuccessful,  the 
steamer  Star  of  the  West,  carrying  provisions  and 
men,  having  been  fired  upon  by  South  Carolina  bat- 
teries on  shore  and  turned  back.  The  garrison,  in- 
cluding non-combatants,  consisted  of  128  men  under 
command  of  Major  Anderson.  After  careful  con- 
sideration it  was  decided  to  send  provisions  to  Fort 
Sumter.  The  decision  precipitated  the  inevitable 
war.  On  April  nth  General  Beauregard,  in  com- 
mand of  the  Confederate  forces  in  South  Carolina, 
summoned  Major  Anderson  to  surrender.  The  sum- 
mons was  refused,  though  Anderson  offered  to  evacu- 
ate the  fort  on  the  15th,  provided  supplies  or  con- 
trary orders  from  Washington  were  not  received 
by  that  time.  The  reply  was  adjudged  unsatisfac- 
tory, and  early  the  next  morning  the  Confederate 
batteries  opened  fire.  After  a  bombardment  of 
thirty-four  hours,  in  which  the  fort  was  practically 
destroyed,  the  garrison  surrendered,  being  allowed 
to  fire  a  parting  salute  to  the  flag  as  they  withdrew. 
On  April  15th  Lincoln  issued  a  call  for  75,000 
volunteers.  The  response  from  most  of  the  northern 
States  was  prompt,  and  troops  were  shortly  hasten- 
ing to  the  defence  of  Washington,  for  the  moment 
in  a  practically  defenceless  condition.  The  capital 
was  not  reached  without  difficulty.  On  April  19th 
the  Sixth  Massachusetts  regiment,  marching  from 
one  railroad  station  to  another  in  Baltimore,  was 

5*4 


SERGEANT      HART      NAILING     THE      COLORS     TO      FLAG -STAFF,     FORT 

SUMTER 


THE    WAR    FOR    THE    UNION 

attacked  by  a  mob  and  obliged  to  fight  its  way 
through,  with  the  loss  of  four  killed  and  a  number 
wounded.  The  Seventh  New  York  and  Eight  Mas- 
sachusetts regiments  made  their  way  from  Philadel- 
phia by  water,  seized  the  railroad  line  from  Annapolis 
to  Washington,  and  gradually  worked  their  way  to 
the  capital.  In  the  course  of  a  few  weeks  50,000 
troops  were  assembled  about  Washington,  and  the 
city  was  safe. 

It  had  been  the  frequent  boast  of  "  fire-eating ' ' 
Southerners  that  one  Southerner  could  whip  four 
Yankees,  and  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  the 
northern  soldiers  held  their  opponents  in  equally 
light  esteem.  Few  on  either  side,  apparently,  thought 
that  the  war  would  be  long;  a  few  quick,  sharp  blows, 
and  the  struggle  would  be  over.  There  was  eager- 
ness to  begin.  The  volunteers  who  had  responded 
to  Lincoln's  call  were  enlisted  for  but  three  months, 
and  it  would  not  do  to  let  their  term  expire  with- 
out giving  them  a  chance  to  distinguish  themselves. 
General  George  B.  McClellan  had  been  successful  in 
driving  the  Confederates  out  of  West  Virginia,  a 
Union  line  had  been  rapidly  formed  along  the  north- 
ern boundary  of  the  Confederacy,  and  a  blockade  of 
the  southern  ports  had  been  proclaimed.  The  cry 
of  "On  to  Richmond!"  now  the  Confederate  capital, 
went  up  from  the  North,  and  Scott,  the  command- 
ing general,  yielded  reluctantly  to  it.  On  July  21st 
the  Union  army  under  General  Irwin  McDowell  met 
the  Confederate  army  under  Generals  Beauregard  and 
Joseph  E.  Johnston,  at  Manassas,  or  Bull  Run,  about 
thirty -five  miles  from  Washington,  and  was  defeated 
with  a  loss  of  about  three  thousand  men.  The  de- 
feated army  fled  in  panic  to  Washington. 

5i5 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

The  Confederacy,  meantime,  had  widened  its 
boundaries  and  rapidly  organized  its  forces.  Jef- 
ferson Davis's  call  for  volunteers  had  evoked  en- 
thusiastic response,  while  the  decision  of  the  federal 
government  to  use  force  had  instantly  strengthened 
the  wavering.  On  the  issuance  of  Lincoln's  call  for 
volunteers,  the  border  States  of  Virginia,  North 
Carolina,  Tennessee,  and  Arkansas  promptly  seceded. 
The  government  of  Maryland  was  at  first  openly  hos- 
tile, but  the  presence  of  Union  troops  enabled  the 
Union  men,  who  were  in  the  majority,  to  keep  the 
State  to  its  allegiance.  Kentucky  tried  to  remain 
neutral,  but  was  shortly  forced  to  the  Union  side, 
while  in  Missouri  the  State  officers,  themselves 
avowed  secessionists,  were  presently  driven  out. 
From  all  the  border  States,  however,  many  recruits 
joined  the  Confederate  army.  The  greater  part  of 
the  Confederate  forces  were  massed  in  eastern  Vir- 
ginia, where  was  to  take  place  some  of  the  hardest 
fighting  of  the  war;  but  Confederates  shortly  faced 
Unionists  all  along  the  border,  garrisoned  batteries 
and  forts  along  the  Mississippi,  whose  lower  course 
they  for  a  time  controlled,  and  occupied  all  the  im- 
portant points  along  the  coast. 

When  Congress  met  in  extra  session  on  July  4th, 
the  Treasury  was  "practically  empty,  the  adminis- 
trative departments  disorganized,  customs  receipts 
almost  at  a  stand-still,  the  debt  increasing,  and  gov- 
ernment credit  ebbing  away."  «  Congress  author- 
ized a  loan  of  $250,000,000,  empowered  the  Presi- 
dent to  call  out  500,000  volunteers  for  any  period 
not  exceeding  three  years,  and  passed  acts  for  the 

1  Dewey,  Financial  History  of  the  United  States   272 
5i6 


THE    WAR    FOR    THE    UNION 

enforcement  of  law  in  insurrectionary  districts  and 
for    the    confiscation    of   property    used    for   insur- 
rectionary purposes.     A  direct  tax  and  an  income- 
tax    were    also    levied,    though   neither  was   to   go 
into  effect  until  early  in    1862.     So    far   as  the  im- 
position of  new  taxes  was  concerned,  Congress  did 
little  at  first  to  increase  the  financial  resources  of  the 
government,  and  borrowing  on  a  large  scale  had  to 
be  resorted  to.     The  remaining  military  events  of 
1 86 1  were  not  striking.     In  August  General  Nathan- 
iel Lyon,  in  command  of  the  Union  forces  in  Missouri, 
was  defeated  at  Wilson's  Creek,  but  the  Confederates 
were  driven  from  the  State  by  the  end  of  the  year. 
Kentucky  also  was  occupied  by  Union  forces.    There 
was   another    Union   reverse   in    October    at    Ball's 
Bluff,    across   the    Potomac   from   Washington.     At 
various   points   on   the  coast,    however,   there  were 
Union  successes,  notably  at  Hatteras  Inlet  and  Port 
Royal.     Neither  side  was  yet  quite  ready  for  war. 
Troops  were  still  raw  and  undisciplined,  the  supply 
of  arms  and  ammunition  was  insufficient,  and  com- 
prehensive plans  of  campaign  had  not  yet  been  work- 
ed out.     The  training  of  the  Union  troops  was  the 
first  care  of  McClellan,  who  succeeded  Scott  as  com- 
manding  general   in    November,    1861.     The   navy, 
too,  was  small,  and  had  to  be  greatly  strengthened 
and  enlarged  before  the  blockade   of  the  southern 
coast  could  be  made  effective. 

.  Before  the  war  was  fairly  under  way  the  United 
States  found  itself  on  the  verge  of  a  serious  embroil- 
ment with  Great  Britain.  In  November,  1861,  J. 
M.  Mason  and  John  Slidell,  commissioners  appointed 
to  secure  European  aid  for  the  Confederate  cause, 
were  taken  from  the  British  mail  steamer  Trent  by 

517 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  United  States  sloop-of-war  San  Jacinto,  Captain 
Wilkes,  and  imprisoned  in  Fort  Warren,  in  Boston 
Harbor.  On  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  Great  Britain 
and  other  maritime  powers  had  promptly  issued 
proclamations  of  neutrality,  thus  giving  to  the  Con- 
federacy the  rights  of  belligerents.  The  forcible 
seizure  of  the  commissioners  was  instantly  resented 
as  unwarrantable  and  a  prompt  apology  demanded, 
British  troops  being  at  the  same  time  hastened  to 
Canada  to  give  weight  to  the  demand.  The  United 
States,  however,  had  no  intention  of  championing 
the  "  right  of  search, "  whose  exercise  by  Great  Britain 
had  been  the  great  cause  of  the  War  of  1812.  Mason 
and  Slidell  were  released  and  the  action  of  Wilkes  was 
disavowed.  Throughout  the  early  course  of  the  war, 
however,  the  sympathy  of  the  influential  classes  in 
England  was  strongly  in  favor  of  the  South,  and  states- 
men and  scholars  confidently  predicted  the  downfall 
of  American  institutions.  Edward  A.  Freeman,  the 
historian,  published  in  1863  the  first  volume  of  &  His- 
tory of  Federal  Government  from  the  Foundation  of  the 
Achaian  League  to  the  Disruption  of  the  United  States. 
Confederate  privateers,  built  or  fitted  out  in  Eng- 
land, for  a  time  almost  destroyed  American  foreign 
commerce.  But  the  knowledge  that  the  United 
States  would  not  tolerate  intervention,  and  would 
probably  at  once  declare  war  against  any  power  that 
aided  the  Confederacy,  effectually  prevented  any 
further  official  recognition  and  any  active  assistance. 
For  the  support  of  the  campaign  of  1862,  Congress, 
now  at  last  awakening  to  a  realization  of  the  magni- 
tude of  the  struggle,  made  elaborate  preparation. 
Issues  of  $150,000,000  of  legal -tender  notes  and  of 
$500,000,000  of  bonds  were  authorized.     Duties  on 

518 


THE    WAR    FOR    THE    UNION 

imports  were  increased,  and  an  elaborate  system  of 
internal  taxes  on  a  great  variety  of  objects  and  oc- 
cupations was  inaugurated,  with  the  purpose  in  each 
case  of  stimulating  industry  in  order  thereby  to 
create  a  larger  body  of  taxable  wealth.  With  small 
exception,  the  increased  taxes  were  patriotically  wel- 
comed by  the  North.  A  stringent  oath  of  office  ex- 
cluded from  the  public  service  all  who  had  in  any 
way  participated  in  the  "  rebellion,"  as  the  war  was 
officially  characterized,  or  who  had  manifested  sym- 
pathy for  the  Confederate  cause.  Vast  grants  of 
land  were  at  the  same  time  made  to  the  States  for 
the  establishment  of  agricultural  colleges,  and  home- 
steads on  the  public  domain  were  offered  to  actual 
settlers  on  liberal  terms.  The  Union  Pacific  Rail- 
way was  chartered  to  open  up  the  region  west  of  the 
Mississippi  and  bind  the  Pacific  coast  more  firmly  to 
the  Union.  Everywhere  the  development  of  natural 
resources  and  the  extension  of  the  settled  area  went 
hand -in -hand  with  the  great  provision  of  revenue 
and  the  greater  accumulation  of  debt  which  the 
extraordinary  expenses  of  war  made  necessary. 

The  military  operations  of  the  year  began  early. 
The  theatres  of  war  were,  in  the  West,  the  Mississippi 
valley,  and,  in  the  East,  Virginia  and  Maryland.  In 
February  General  Ulysses  S.  Grant,  with  the  aid  of 
Commodore  Foote  and  a  gun-boat  flotilla,  invaded  Con- 
federate territory  and  took  Fort  Henry,  on  the  Ten- 
nessee River,  following  this  with  the  capture  of  Fort 
Donelson,  on  the  Cumberland.  The  commandant  at 
the  latter  fort,  Buckner,  asked  Grant  for  terms.  The 
reply  came  back:  "  No  terms  except  an  unconditional 
and  immediate  surrender  can  be  accepted.  I  propose 
to  move  immediately  upon  your  works."     These  vic- 

5i9 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

tories  gave  the  Union  forces  control  of  the  two  rivers 
throughout  their  lower  courses,  while  the  abandonment 
of  Columbus  by  the  Confederates  shortly  placed  the 
Mississippi  as  far  south  as  Island  Number  Ten,  be- 
low the  junction  of  the  Ohio,  in  federal  hands.  The 
State  officials  of  Tennessee  having  fled  on  the  occu- 
pation of  Nashville  by  the  Union  troops,  Lincoln  ap- 
pointed Andrew  Johnson  military  governor  of  the 
State.  In  April  a  two  days'  battle  at  Shiloh,  or 
Pittsburg  Landing,  drove  the  Confederates  out  of 
southwestern  Tennessee.  The  next  day  Island  Num- 
ber Ten  was  surrendered  to  Foote  and  General  Pope, 
thus  opening  the  upper  Mississippi  as  far  as  Vicks- 
burg.  In  May  the  Union  forces  under  Halleck  oc- 
cupied Corinth,  Mississippi.  To  gain  control  of  the 
Mississippi  River  was  of  the  utmost  importance,  as 
by  so  doing  the  Confederacy  would  be  divided,  its 
resisting  power  weakened,  and  invasion  of  its  west- 
ern end  greatly  facilitated.  The  lower  course  of  the 
river  was  shortly  opened.  In  April  a  powerful  fleet 
under  Farragut  and  a  land  force  under  Butler  at- 
tacked New  Orleans,  the  principal  port  of  the  south- 
ern States.  The  defences  below  the  city  were  thought 
impregnable — a  barrier  of  chains  and  logs,  numerous 
fire-rafts,  a  fleet  of  gun-boats  and  iron-clad  rams,  and 
a  floating  battery,  besides  forts  Jackson  and  St. 
Philip.  The  bombardment  of  the  forts  began  April 
1 8th;  on  the  25th  Farragut  reached  New  Orleans;  on 
the  29th  the  city  surrendered.  Memphis  was  taken 
early  in  June,  and  of  the  Confederate  strongholds  on 
the  river  only  Vicksburg  and  Port  Hudson  remained. 
Bragg,  who  had  succeeded  Beauregard,  passed 
northward  from  Chattanooga  as  far  as  Louisville, 
Kentucky,  but  was  defeated  by  Buell,  at  Perryville, 

520 


GENERAL    ULYSSES    S.    GRANT 


THE    WAR    FOR   THE    UNION 

October  8th.  Bragg  succeeded  in  making  good  his 
escape  into  Tennessee  with  a  great  quantity  of  plun- 
der. At  Iuka  and  Corinth,  however,  the  Confederates 
were  repulsed  with  heavy  losses.  In  December, 
Grant,  operating  with  Sherman  against  Vicksburg, 
lost  his  base  of  supplies  at  Holly  Springs,  as  the  re- 
sult of  a  sudden  attack  by  Confederate  cavalry.  But 
the  Union  line  of  defence  was  too  strong  to  be  broken 
through.  At  the  great  battle  of  Murfreesborough, 
December  3ist-January  2d,  Bragg  was  again  defeated, 
and  northern  Tennessee  remained  in  federal  hands. 

While  success  was  attending  the  Union  forces  in 
the  West  on  land  and  water,  the  federal  arms  in  the 
East  had  met  with  serious  reverses.     McClellan  had 
planned  an  attack  on  Richmond.     With  an  army  of 
100,000  men  he  began  a  movement  from  Fortress 
Monroe,   whither  he  had  transported  his  army  by 
water,  up  the  low  peninsula  between  the  York  and 
James    rivers.     While    thus    occupied,    "Stonewall" 
Jackson  raided  the  Shenandoah  Valley,  threatened 
Washington,  and  effectually  prevented  McDowell,  who 
had  been  left  at  Fredericksburg  with  40,000  men, 
from  co-operating  with  McClellan.     At  Fair  Oaks, 
May  3ist-June  1st,  McClellan  was  attacked  by  the 
Confederates  under  Robert  E.  Lee  and  "Stonewall" 
Jackson,  and  forced  to  turn  aside  to  Harrison  Land- 
ing, on  the  James,  which  he  reached  early  in  July, 
after  seven  days  of  almost  continuous  fighting.     Mc- 
Clellan was  severely  criticised  for  his  course  in  this 
campaign,  while  he  in  turn  accused  Stanton,  the  Sec- 
retary of  War,  of  having  done  his  best  to  sacrifice 
the  army  through  failure  to  send  the  reinforcements 
under  McDowell  on  which  McClellan  appears  to  have 
counted.     Military  critics  have  been  inclined  to  praise 
34  52i 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

McClellan's  brilliant  retreat  even  though  they  took 
exceptions  to  the  general  plan  of  campaign. 

Popular  dissatisfaction  at  the  North,  however,  de- 
manded a  sacrifice.  McClellan  was  removed  from 
the  chief  command,  and  Halleck,  distinguished  for 
his  success  in  the  West,  was  appointed  in  his  place, 
while  a  new  "Army  of  Virginia"  was  formed  under 
command  of  Pope.  Pope  was  shortly  defeated  by 
Lee  at  Bull  Run  in  a  four  days'  battle  (August  29th- 
September  1st),  and  compelled  to  fall  back  to  Wash- 
ington. Lee  then  invaded  Maryland,  only  to  meet 
defeat  at  Antietam,  September  17th,  in  "  the  bloodiest 
single  day  of  fighting  of  the  war."  But  McClellan, 
who  was  again  in  command,  was  slow  in  pursuit,  and 
allowed  Lee  to  withdraw  across  the  Potomac.  In 
November  McClellan  was  replaced  by  Burnside. 
Burnside  attacked  Lee  at  the  heights  of  Fredericks- 
burg, but  could  not  dislodge  him,  and  was  obliged 
to  retire  with  a  loss  more  than  twice  that  of  the  Con- 
federates. If  it  was  clear  that  Lee  could  not  suc- 
cessfully invade  the  North,  it  was  equally  clear  that 
the  Union  forces  could  not  hope  easily  to  invade  the 
South. 

A  brilliant  naval  battle  in  Virginia  waters  early  in 
the  year  did  something  to  offset  the  failure  of  the 
Peninsular  campaign.  The  Merrimac,  a  steam-frig- 
ate which  the  commandant  of  the  Norfolk  navy-yard 
had  scuttled  and  sunk  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war, 
had  been  raised  by  the  Confederates  and  converted 
into  an  iron-clad  ram.  On  March  8th  this  formidable 
craft,  renamed  the  Virginia,  attacked  the  federal 
fleet  at  Hampton  Roads.  The  Cumberland  was  cut 
in  two  and  sunk,  and  the  Congress  fired  and  de- 
stroyed.    Nothing,  apparently,  could  save  from  de- 

522 


THE    WAR    FOR    THE    UNION 

struction  the  entire  fleet.  During  the  night,  how- 
ever, there  arrived  at  Hampton  Roads  the  Monitor,  a 
vessel  with  a  revolving  iron  turret  on  a  low  deck, 
the  design  of  John  Ericsson.  In  the  engagement  the 
next  day  between  the  Monitor  and  the  Virginia, 
neither  vessel  materially  damaged  the  other ;  but  the 
withdrawal  of  the  Virginia,  and  its  subsequent  de- 
struction by  the  Confederates,  left  the  Monitor, 
which  before  the  engagement  had  been  contemptu- 
ously likened  to  a  " cheese-box  on  a  raft,"  the  victor. 
The  battle  began  a  revolution  in  naval  warfare,  for  it 
showed  that  the  day  of  wooden  ships  was  past. 

In  August,  1 86 1,  Congress  had  by  statute  pro- 
vided that  any  slave  who  should  be  compelled  to  bear 
arms  or  perform  any  military  or  naval  service  against 
the  United  States  should  thereupon  become  free. 
Subsequent  statutes  forbade  the  military  and  naval 
authorities  to  aid  in  the  return  of  fugitive  slaves, 
abolished  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia  and  the 
Territories — in  the  former  at  an  expense  of  about 
a  million  dollars — declared  free  all  fugitives  escaping 
within  the  Union  lines,  and  authorized  the  employ- 
ment of  negroes  as  soldiers.  Some  180,000  negroes 
enlisted  in  the  Union  army  during  the  war,  and  served 
with  credit.  General  Benjamin  F.  Butler,  the  fed- 
eral commander  at  New  Orleans,  had  already,  earlier 
in  the  war,  treated  escaped  slaves  as  "  contraband  of 
war,"  but  the  action  of  some  of  the  federal  com- 
manders in  declaring  free  the  slaves  in  the  districts 
occupied  by  their  armies  had,  however,  been  dis- 
avowed by  Lincoln.  The  general  abolition  of  sla- 
very throughout  the  United  States  was,  of  course, 
early  seen  to  be  a  possible  result  of  the  war,  but 
there  was  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  way  in 

523 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

which  such  a  result  could  be  brought  about.  In  April, 
1862,  a  resolution  of  Congress,  following  Lincoln's 
suggestion,  declared  "that  the  United  States  ought 
to  co-operate  with  any  State  which  may  adopt  grad- 
ual abolishment  of  slavery,  giving  to  such  State  pe- 
cuniary aid  to  be  used  ...  to  compensate  for  the  in- 
conveniences, public  and  private,  produced  by  such 
change  of  system."  This  project  of  "compensated 
emancipation."  had  Lincoln's  hearty  support,  but  ef- 
forts to  secure  its  adoption  in  the  border  States  were 
fruitless.  By  midsummer,  however,  Lincoln,  who 
was  now  prepared  to  make  slavery  as  well  as  secession 
a  cause  of  the  war,  had  decided  upon  emancipation 
by  Executive  act,  and  September  2 2d,  five  days 
after  the  repulse  of  Lee  at  Antietam,  a  preliminary 
proclamation  announced  that  on  January  1,  1863, 
all  the  slaves  in  States  which  were  then  in  rebel- 
lion would  be  freed.  On  the  appointed  day  the 
definitive  proclamation  was  issued.  Epoch-making 
as  was  the  event,  its  precise  significance  should  not 
be  misunderstood.  The  emancipation  proclamation 
was  in  law  only  a  military  measure  designed  to  crip- 
ple the  power  of  the  enemy,  and  as  such  was  fully 
warranted  by  the  Constitution  and  by  military  law. 
It  dealt  slavery  a  blow  from  which  there  was  no  pos- 
sibility of  recovery,  but  it  did  not  abolish  slavery  as  a 
system,  nor  did  it  affect  any  State  or  part  of  a  State 
in  which  there  was  no  war.  It  was  not  until  Decem- 
ber 18,  1865,  that  the  Thirteenth  Amendment  to  the 
Constitution  put  an  end  to  slavery  throughout  the 
United  States. 

Terrible  as  was  the  punishment  which  the  loss  of 
property  by  emancipation  meted  out  to  the  South^ 
a  loss  estimated  at  $2,000,000,000 — emancipation  was, 

524 


THE    WAR    FOR    THE    UNION 

after  all,  but  one,  though  the  severest,  of  a  num- 
ber of  drastic  measures  employed  to  crush  the  Con- 
federacy. The  blockade  of  the  coast,  more  and  more 
rigidly  enforced,  destroyed  the  cotton  trade  and 
practically  cut  off  all  outside  supplies  of  food,  cloth- 
ing, and  munitions  of  war  from  the  South.  The 
value  of  cotton  exported  fell  from  more  than  $202,- 
000,000  in  i860  to  $4,000,000  in  1862.  In  December, 
1862,  the  ancient  commonwealth  of  Virginia  was  dis- 
membered, and  forty-eight  counties  were  admitted 
to  the  Union  as  the  State  of  West  Virginia.  In 
March,  1863,  the  President  was  authorized  to  sus- 
pend the  privilege  of  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus  in 
any  part  of  the  country  whenever,  in  his  judgment, 
the  public  safety  required  it.  So  far  as  practice  was 
concerned,  the  act  only  gave  formal  sanction  to  what 
had  been  done  ever  since  the  war  broke  out.  Through- 
out the  North  large  numbers  of  persons,  alleged  to 
be  in  sympathy  with  the  Confederate  cause  or  sus- 
pected of  giving  aid  to  it,  had  been  arrested  by  mili- 
tary authority,  confined  in  prisons  and  jails,  and 
denied  the  privilege  of  trial  before  the  civil  courts. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  many  of  these  arrests 
were  illegal,  and  that  innocent  persons  were  put  to 
inconvenience  and  suffering  as  a  result  of  them,  but 
the  exigency  of  war  made  redress  for  the  time  being 
out  of  the  question.  There  was  thought  to  be  no 
time  to  consider  questions  of  private  political  right  or 
civil  privilege  when  the  nation  was  fighting  for  its 
life.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  the  Confederacy 
President  Davis  freely  exercised  the  right  of  suspend- 
ing the  habeas  corpus  privilege,  with  the  result  that 
the  government  of  the  Confederacy,  for  the  greater 
part  of  the  war,  became  a  military  despotism.     The 

525 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

policy  of  Davis  called  forth  increasing  criticism  as 
the  war  went  on,  and  in  the  Confederate  army  there 
were  many  desertions. 

The  great  battles  of  1863  took  place  in  Virginia, 
in  Tennessee,  and  on  the  Mississippi.  The  Army  of 
the  Potomac,  now  under  command  of  "Fighting  Joe 
Hooker,"  crossed  the  Rappahannock,  and  on  May  2d 
met  Lee  at  Chancellorsville.  A  two  days'  battle 
drove  the  Union  forces  back  across  the  Rappahan- 
nock with  heavy  loss,  though  the  death  of ' '  Stonewall ' ' 
Jackson,  who  was  shot  by  mistake  by  Confederate 
pickets,  was  an  irreparable  loss  to  the  Confederate 
cause.  In  June  Lee  invaded  the  North  by  way  of 
the  Shenandoah  Valley,  crossed  the  Potomac,  and 
entered  Pennsylvania.  His  advance  caused  wide- 
spread alarm.  Hooker  was  replaced  by  Meade,  and 
on  July  1st  the  two  armies  met  at  Gettysburg.  The 
three  days'  battle  which  followed  was  the  only  great 
engagement  within  the  limits  of  a  free  State.  The 
Union  forces  occupied  Cemetery  Ridge,  while  Lee's 
army  took  possession  of  Seminary  Ridge  opposite. 
On  the  second  day  the  Confederates  made  a  desperate 
effort  to  take  the  hill  known  as  Little  Round  Top, 
which  the  Union  forces  had  not  occupied,  but  they 
were  beaten  back,  though  they  succeeded  in  taking 
the  Union  position  at  Culp's  Hill.  On  the  third  day 
Lee  attacked  the  Union  centre.  After  two  hours  of 
terrific  cannonading,  15,000  Confederates  under 
Pickett,  moving  in  triple  ranks  a  mile  wide,  ad- 
vanced across  the  space  which  separated  the  two 
armies,  straight  up  the  hill,  where  Hancock,  protected 
by  a  stone  wall,  awaited  the  charge.  A  few  reached 
the  wall,  where  a  desperate  hand-to-hand  fight  en- 
sued.    But  before  the  awful  fire  of  the  Union  bat- 

526 


THE    WAR    FOR    THE    UNION 

teries  and  musketry  no  men  could  stand,  and  a  hill- 
side strewn  thick  with  dead  and  wounded  marked 
the  Confederate  defeat.  If  anything  more  were  need- 
ed to  consecrate  this  greatest  of  all  American  battle- 
fields, it  was  the  noble  address  of  Lincoln,  on  the 
19th  of  the  following  November,  at  the  dedication 
of  a  part  of  the  field  as  a  national  military  ceme- 
tery. Lee  fell  back  towards  Richmond,  whither 
Meade,  whose  losses  were  greater  than  those  of  his 
opponent,  slowly  followed. 

The  next  day,  July  4th,  Grant  occupied  Vicksburg. 
Grant  had  spent  some  months  in  unsuccessful  efforts 
to  reduce  Vicksburg  from  the  west  side  of  the  Missis- 
sippi. Then,  in  April,  his  gun-boats  under  Porter 
having  passed  the  batteries,  Grant  crossed  the  river 
below  the  city  and  started  northward.  At  Jackson, 
Mississippi,  he  defeated  a  Confederate  force  under 
General  Toseph  E.  Johnston,  and  by  destroying  the 
railroads'  cut  off  the  supplies  from  Vicksburg.  In 
May  he  defeated  Pemberton,  and  drove  him  into  the 
city,  and,  effecting  a  junction  with  Sherman,  began 
a  siege.  Batteries  on  land  and  gun-boats  on  the 
river  kept  up  an  incessant  bombardment,  and  before 
long  starvation,  sickness,  and  death  wrought  fearful 
havoc  among  the  garrison  and  the  inhabitants.  On 
July  3d,  after  an  investment  of  six  weeks,  the 
city  was  surrendered,  and  the  next  day  the  Union 
forces  took  possession.  The  prisoners,  including  non- 
combatants,  numbered  about  thirty-two  thousand. 
Five  days  later  the  capitulation  of  Port  Hudson  gave 
the  control  of  the  Mississippi  to  the  Union  forces. 
The  Confederacy  had  been  ''cut  in  two,"  and  Louisi- 
ana and  Texas  could  no  longer  feed  or  help  the  East. 

While  Grant  was  reducing  Vicksburg,  Rosecrans 

527 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

had  forced  Bragg  out  of  Tennessee  into  Georgia.  At 
Chickamauga  Creek,  however,  Bragg  made  a  stand, 
and  on  September  19th  and  20th  inflicted  upon  a  part 
of  theUnion  army  a  severe  defeat.  Thanks  to  General 
George  H.  Thomas,  the  remainder  of  the  Union  army 
was  enabled  to  retire  to  Chattanooga,  where  it  was 
closely  besieged  by  Bragg  for  two  months,  the  cutting 
off  of  supplies  reducing  it  near  to  starvation.  In 
November  Grant,  with  Hooker,  Sherman,  and  Sheri- 
dan, moved  to  Thomas's  relief.  On  the  24th  Hooker 
drove  Bragg's  forces  from  Lookout  Mountain— the 
"battle  above  the  clouds" — and  the  next  day  Sher- 
man stormed  Missionary  Ridge.  Bragg  withdrew 
towards  Atlanta. 

Grant  next  turned  his  attention  to  Lee,  an  an- 
tagonist whose  skill  was  at  least  equal  to  his  own, 
but  whose  resources  in  men,  money,  and  supplies 
were  rapidly  disappearing  with  the  exhaustion  of 
the  Confederacy.  The  objective  point  was  Rich- 
mond. At  the  beginning  of  May,  1864,  Grant  en- 
tered the  wild  region  beyond  the  Rapidan  known  as 
the  "Wilderness  "  and  began  "  hammering."  A  two 
days'  battle  resulted  only  in  awful  loss  of  life;  Spott- 
sylvania  Court-House,  a  few  days  later,  was  a  repeti- 
tion of  the  Wilderness  battle;  and  an  ill-advised  as- 
sault on  Lee's  intrenchments  at  Cold  Harbor  cost 
10,000  men.  The  total  Union  losses  during  six 
weeks  of  campaigning  were  about  fifty -five  thou- 
sand. In  hope  of  diverting  Grant  from  Petersburg, 
which  he  had  besieged,  Lee  sent  Early  on  a  raid  down 
the  Shenandoah  Valley,  but  beyond  threatening 
Washington,  burning  Chambersburg,  and  plundering 
the  country,  the  diversion  accomplished  nothing. 
To  prevent  any  further  use  of  this  tempting  avenue 

528 


THE    WAR    FOR    THE    UNION 

to  the  North,  Grant  sent  Sheridan  to  devastate 
the  valley  — a  charge  which  was  carried  out  so 
thoroughly  that  it  was  said  a  crow  could  not  fly 
through  the   valley   unless   he  took  his  food  with 

him.  , 

Sherman,  meantime,  had  moved  against  Johnston. 
Driving  his  enemy  slowly  before  him,  by  July  he  was 
in  sight  of  Atlanta.     Hood  now  replaced  Johnston, 
but,  hard  fighter  though  he  was,  he  could  not  hold 
Atlanta,  and  September  ist  the  Union  forces  entered 
the  city.     The  inhabitants  were  compelled  to  leave, 
and  the  city  was  turned  into  a  military  post.     But 
Sherman's  position  was  precarious.     His  only  source 
of  supply  for  his  army  was  Nashville,  with  which  he 
was  connected  by  a  single  line  of  railroad.     With 
Grant's  approval,   he  now  determined  to   abandon 
Atlanta   and    march   to    Savannah.     On    November 
15th  the  Union  army  of  60,000  men  began  the  fa- 
mous ''march  to  the  sea."     It  was  a  terrible  visita- 
tion for   an    already  exhausted  country.     Through 
a  strip  sixty  miles  wide,  railroads  and  all  property 
likely  to  prove  useful  to  the  Confederates  were  de- 
stroyed,  and    the    plantations    stripped    of    horses, 
mules,  provisions,  and  valuables.     Private  as  well  as 
public  property  was  despoiled.     On  Christmas  Day 
Sherman  was  in  possession  of  Savannah.      After    a 
month's  rest  he  started  north  to  join  Grant,  ending  his 
victorious  progress  at  Goldsborough,  North  Carolina, 
on  March  1 6th.    Nothing  could  have  shown  more  strik- 
ingly the  hollowness  of  the  Confederacy.     Hood,  who 
had  been  sent  to  threaten  Nashville,  had  in  the  mean 
time  been  utterly  routed  by  Thomas  in  December, 
before   Sherman   reached   Savannah;   Farragut   had 
rounded  out  his  brilliant  career  by  fighting  his  way 

529 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

into  the  harbor  of  Mobile ;  and  Fort  Fisher,  in  Wil- 
mington Harbor,  North  Carolina,  had  fallen. 

The  Presidential  election  of  1864  was  the  second 
war-time  election  in  our  history.  The  political  sky 
had  been  for  some  time  threatening.  Notwithstand- 
ing the  successes  of  the  Union  armies  and  the  accumu- 
lating proofs  that  the  resisting  power  of  the  Con- 
federacy was  near  its  end,  there  had  long  been  much 
criticism  of  the  President  and  Congress  for  their  con- 
duct of  the  war.  There  were  the  inevitable  jealousies 
of  commanders,  more  sharply  exhibited,  as  usual,  in 
the  extravagant  claims  of  their  supporters  than  in 
the  protestations  of  the  men  themselves.  McClellan 
in  particular  was  felt  by  many  to  have  been  unjustly 
treated.  Enthusiasm,  too,  had  waned,  and  the  enor- 
mous loss  of  life  had  discouraged  enlistments.  It 
had  been  necessary  to  resort  to  drafting,  or  forcible 
conscription,  and  the  draft  riots  in  New  York,  in 
July,  1863,  when  for  four  days  the  city  was  helpless 
in  the  hands  of  a  mob,  were  fresh  in  mind.  The  war 
was  costing  nearly  three  million  dollars  a  day,  there 
was  an  appalling  burden  of  debt,  speculation  was  rife, 
and  taxes  and  prices  had  mounted  to  unheard-of 
figures.  Many  fortunes  had  been  made  during  the 
war,  and  there  were  ugly  rumors  of  fraud,  favoritism, 
and  ofhcial  corruption.  Prominent  among  the  causes 
of  dissatisfaction  was  the  wholesale  interference  with 
the  privilege  of  habeas  corpus,  though  the  activity  of 
secret  organizations  in  Ohio,  Indiana,  and  Illinois, 
having  for  their  aim  forcible  resistance  to  the  federal 
government,  seemed  to  make  such  interference  more 
than  ever  justifiable.  The  State  elections  of  1862 
had  gone  rather  against  the  Republicans,  the  im- 
portant State  of  New  York  having  been  lost  to  them, 

53o 


ADMIRAL    FARRAGUT 


« .   '      .    <     • 


THE    WAR    FOR    THE    UNION 

and  their  majority  in  the  House  of  Representatives 
had  been  reduced.  Lincoln,  though  strong  with  the 
mass  of  the  people,  had  many  foes  within  his  own  po- 
litical household,  especially  among  those  who  were 
restive  under  his  conservative  policy  and  clamorous 
for  more  radical  measures. 

The  Republicans  met  the  situation  with  aggressive 
boldness,  rightly  regarding  the  re-election  of  Lincoln 
as  equal  in  importance  to  the  winning  of  any  cam- 
paign in  the  field;  and  they  welcomed  to  their  con- 
vention at  Baltimore  representatives  of  all  parties 
who  were  agreed  that  the  Union  should  be  maintain- 
ed intact.  Tennessee,  Louisiana,  and  Arkansas,  in 
which  "reconstructed"  loyal  governments  had  been 
established,  were  also  represented,  and  their  delegates 
allowed  to  vote.  The  platform  of  this  Union  con- 
vention pledged  the  fuL  support  of  the  party  to  the 
government  in  the  prosecution  of  the  war  to  a  suc- 
cessful conclusion,  demanded  the  prohibition  of 
slavery  by  constitutional  amendment,  declared  that 
the  national  faith  pledged  for  the  redemption  of  the 
public  debt  must  be  kept  inviolate,  and  applauded 
"the  practical  wisdom,  the  unselfish  patriotism,  and 
the  unswerving  fidelity"  of  Lincoln.  The  candidate 
for  Vice-president  was  Andrew  Johnson,  of  Tennes- 
see, a  Union  Democrat.  The  Democrats  nominated 
General  McClellan  on  a  platform  which  characterized 
the  war  as  "four  years  of  failure,"  and  demanded 
its  immediate  cessation.  The  declaration  of  the  plat- 
form was  practically  repudiated  by  the  candidate. 
The  twenty-five  States  which  took  part  in  the  elec- 
tion returned  212  electoral  votes  for  Lincoln  to  21 
for  McClellan,  while  the  popular  vote  showed  a  plu- 
rality of  494,567  in  a  total  of  4,166,537. 

53i 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

The  final  act  of  the  great  drama  soon  opened.  In 
February,  1865,  Confederate  commissioners  met  Lin- 
coln and  Seward  at  Hampton  Roads  and  discussed 
terms  of  peace;  but,  as  the  commissioners  could  not 
promise  a  return  of  the  seceded  States  to  their  al- 
legiance, the  negotiations  were  fruitless.  Lincoln's 
inaugural  address  in  March  expressed  a  fervent  hope 
for  peace,  but  held  out  no  promise  of  a  cessation  of 
hostilities  until  the  cause  of  the  North  should  have 
triumphed.  Sherman's  cavalry  shortly  cut  or!  sup- 
plies from  Richmond,  and  on  April  2d  Petersburg, 
now  nine  months  besieged,  was  carried  by  assault. 
Richmond  was  at  once  abandoned,  and  the  next  day 
the  Union  army  took  possession  of  the  Confederate 
capital.  Six  days  later,  at  Appomattox  Court-House, 
Lee  surrendered  his  army  to  Grant.  The  terms  were 
generous :  Lee's  men  were  to  lay  down  their  arms  and 
be  released  on  parole,  the  soldiers  being  allowed  to 
keep  their  horses  "  for  the  spring  ploughing  and  farm- 
work."  The  United  States  neither  tried  nor  executed 
any  one  for  treason.  On  April  26th  Johnston  surren- 
dered his  army  to  Sherman,  and  the  great  Civil  War 
was  at  an  end.  The  high  hopes  of  the  South  had 
indeed  been  blasted,  its  dominant  political  and  social 
ideals  trampled  remorselessly  under  foot ;  but  there 
was  a  gain  that  outweighed  the  loss.  For  with  the 
downfall  of  the  Confederacy  the  South  entered  upon 
a  new  life.  The  incubus  of  slavery,  which  for  genera- 
tions had  hung  like  a  dead  weight  about  its  neck,  was 
cast  off.  The  South  ceased  to  rest  its  economic  life 
on  a  patriarchal  system  of  agriculture,  and  entered 
with  free  labor  upon  an  industrial  development  which 
was  to  bring  it  happiness,  prosperity,  and  a  new  hope. 
Dreadful  as  were  the  ravages  of  war,  humiliating  as 

532 


THE    WAR    FOR    THE    UNION 

were  the  political  experiences  through  which  it  had 
yet  to  pass,  the  South  had  attained— what  it  had  never 
known  before— freedom ;  and  from  the  time  when  the 
"  lost  cause"  became  but  a  memory  and  a  name,  those 
who  had  staked  their  all  upon  it  set  themselves  to 
construct  a  new  South  which  should  contribute  not 
less  than  the  old  had  done  to  the  prosperity  and  wel- 
fare of  the  nation  and  the  enrichment  of  the  national 
character. 

It  would  have  been  well  for  the  South  if  Lincoln 
could  have  lived  to  direct  the  rehabilitation.  But  his 
work,  too,  was  done.  He  was  shot  as  he  sat  in  a  box 
at  Ford's  Theatre,  in  Washington,  on  the  night  of 
April  14th,  and  died  the  next  morning.  His  death 
robbed  the  South  of  its  best  and  wisest  friend. 
Unbending  as  his  determination  to  save  the  Union 
at  any  cost  had  been,  he  was  nevertheless  consid- 
erate of  the  South,  and  willing  to  the  last  to  enter- 
tain any  reasonable  proposition  for  peace.  No  one 
could  have  acted  less  as  a  mere  politician  or  more  as 
a  patriot  and  statesman  than  did  Lincoln  throughout 
the  four  troubled  years  of  his  momentous  administra- 
tion. Could  he  have  lived  to  direct  with  Congress 
the  reconstruction  of  the  seceded  States,  the  South 
might  have  been  spared  the  orgy  of  insult  and  crime 
which  the  Republican  party,  blind  to  its  own  perma- 
nent interests,  later  fostered.  In  his  rugged  simplic- 
ity, frank  honesty,  pervading  seriousness,  and  prac- 
tical good  sense,  he  was,  for  the  ante-bellum  period, 
a  typical  American,  and  it  was  fitting  that  under  him 
the  Union  was  saved. 

It  is  difficult  to  comprehend  the  enormous  cost  of 
the  war.  A  total  of  about  2,700,000  men  were  en- 
rolled in  the  Union  army  and  navy.     Of  this  number 

533 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

over  300,000  were  killed  or  died  in  the  service.     The 
losses  of  the  South,  though  not  accurately  known, 
probably  equalled   in    number   those  of  the  North; 
but  only  about  half  as  many  Confederates  were  en- 
rolled.    The    enormous    pension     list,     aggregating 
$138,898,000   in   1903,  and   amounting,   all   told,  to 
$2,979,938,000    since    1861,   testifies   to   the    burden 
which  the    war   entailed    upon   future    generations. 
The  military  and  naval  expenditures  for  four  years 
had    been    over    $3,000,000,000,    and    the    debt    of 
the  United  States  at  the  end  of  the  war  was  over 
$2,600,000,000.     To  all  this  must  be  added  the  ex- 
penditures of  the  States  in  equipping  troops,  most 
of  which  were  subsequently  reimbursed  by  the  United. 
States ;  the  outlay  for  State  pensions  and  bounties ;  and 
the  cost  to  the  people  in  the  enhanced  prices— greater 
by  considerable  than  the  accompanying  rise  in  wages 
—of  commodities  of  all  sorts  as  a  result  of  high  taxes, 
extraordinary  expenditures,  the  speculation  which  al- 
ways accompanies  war,  and  paper  money.     A  recent 
estimate,  aggregating  all  these  items,  places  the  total 
cost  of  the  Civil  War  to  the  present  time  at  about 
seven  billion  dollars.     "  Compensated  emancipation  " 
had  been  thought  impracticable  because,  it  was  said 
it  would  cost  the  federal  government  the  ruinous  sum 
of  one  billion  dollars.     Could  any  one  have  foreseen 
the  cost  of  war,  a  thousand  million  dollars  might  well 
have  seemed  a  trivial  sum. 

Of  the  financial  measures  of  the  war  period,  some 
had  far-reaching  consequences.  It  was  the  defect 
of  the  financial  administration  that  it  failed  prompt- 

LZ  mT -!ue  increased  expenditures  by  increased 
taxes,  notwithstanding  the  readiness  of  the  people  to 
pay.     Resort  was  had  instead  to  issues  of  bonds, 

534 


THE    WAR    FOR    THE    UNION 

treasury  notes,  and  legal- tender  paper-money;  and 
such  issues  were  continued  throughout  the  war.  So 
far  as  giving  the  paper-money  a  legal-tender  quality 
was  concerned,  the  measure  was  certainly  of  doubt- 
ful legality,  if  not  of  doubtful  propriety,  and  brought 
grave  financial  difficulties  later.  The  large  volume 
of  paper,  moreover,  joined  to  the  demand  for  money 
incident  to  the  large  bond  issues,  speedily  drove 
specie  out  of  active  circulation,  and  it  was  not  until 
January  i,  1879,  that  specie  payment  was  resumed. 
The  tariff  policy  which  the  exigencies  of  war  made 
necessary  operated,  by  powerfully  stimulating  do- 
mestic manufactures  and  adding  greatly  to  their 
profitableness,  to  fasten  upon  the  country  the  regime 
of  high  protective  duties,  and,  by  the  creation  of 
"favored  interests,"  to  induce  political  as  well  as 
economic  complications  of  profound  seriousness.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  national  banking  system,  finally 
established  in  1863,  though  having  for  its  immediate 
object  the  facilitating  of  the  sale  of  United  States 
bonds,  contributed  powerfully  to  the  business  prosper- 
ity and  stability  of  the  country  by  the  uniformity  of 
its  bank  organization  and  note  issues,  and  the  security 
of  its  credit  based  upon  the  promise  of  the  United  States 
to  redeem  the  bonds  held  as  security  for  the  notes.  ■ 

Yet,  great  as  was  the  burden  which  the  war  entailed 
upon  the  North,  the  burden  upon  the  South  was  in 
proportion  vastly  greater.  When  the  forces  of  Lee 
and  Johnston  laid  down  their  arms,  the  South  was 
prostrate.  Of  the  men  whom  the  Confederacy  sent 
into  the  field,  more  than  a  fourth  had  died.  The 
country,  as  a  whole,  was  desolate.  The  operations  of 
war  had  destroyed  vast  amounts  of  property,  both 
public  and  private,  much  necessarily,  much  wanton- 

535 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

ly.  Everywhere  houses,  mills,  and  other  buildings 
had  been  burned,  woods  and  orchards  cut  down, 
horses,  mules,  and  cattle  carried  off.  Railroads  not 
destroyed  by  the  federal  troops  deteriorated  rapidly ; 
as  early  as  1863  only  a  few  operated  more  than  two 
trains  a  day.  "The  North  Carolina  Railroad  had 
only  five  serviceable  passenger  cars  left  for  its  two 
hundred  and  twenty -three  miles."  x  The  destruction 
of  personal  property  by  the  soldiers,  both  Union 
and  Confederate,  had  been  immense.  Industry  was 
at  a  stand-still.  The  great  staple  crops  had  almost 
ceased  to  be  raised,  nor  could  they  readily  find  a 
market  if  produced,  though  some  cotton  continued  to 
be  exported,  despite  the  blockade,  throughout  the  war. 
Very  early  in  the  war  there  began  to  be  a  scarcity  of 
many  necessary  articles  of  daily  consumption,  and 
the  scarcity  became  acute  as  the  grip  of  the  North 
tightened.  The  Union  army  was  the  best-fed,  best- 
clothed,  and  best-sheltered  army  that  had  ever  been 
set  on  foot  in  the  world ;  the  Confederates,  on  the  con- 
trary, were  often  hungry,  cold,  and  half  naked.  Not 
the  least  pathetic  incident  in  Lee's  surrender  was  his 
request  that  his  famished  troops  might  be  fed. 
Throughout  the  Confederacy  such  articles  as  flour, 
cloth,  leather,  paper,  salt,  and  hardware  were  for  the 
most  part  obtainable  only  at  extravagant  prices,  and 
then  with  difficulty.  Nor  was  this  all.  The  emanci- 
pation of  the  negroes  destroyed  at  a  single  blow  a 
large  part  of  the  personal  property  of  the  South,  at 
the  same  time  that  it  made  a  revolutionary  change 
in  the  whole  industrial  system.  With  the  fall  of  the 
Confederacy,  too,  the  hundreds  of  millions  invested 

1  Schwab,  Confederate  States  of  America,  274. 
536 


fc 


GENERAL    ROBERT    E.    LEE 


THE    WAR    FOR    THE    UNION 

in  Confederate  bonds  were  rendered  worthless,  as  was 
the  Confederate  paper -money,  while  in  1868  the 
Fourteenth  Amendment  to  the  Constitution  forbade 
the  payment  of  any  portion  of  the  Confederate  debt. 
Every  dollar  which  the  States  or  individuals  had  ex- 
pended in  aid  of  secession  was  thus  a  total  loss. 
Never  was  a  conquered  people  anywhere  so  crushed, 
never  a  vanquished  enemy  left  so  completely  without 
financial  resource. 

Little  as  one  might  esteem  the  cause  for  which  the 
South  fought,  the  heroic  devotion  of  the  people  com- 
manded admiration  and  praise.  Constancy,  high 
spirit,  family  and  sectional  pride  animated  the  south- 
ern armies,  and  went  far  to  offset  the  disparity  of 
numbers.  When  the  fathers  fell,  the  sons  took  their 
places,  for  the  whole  male  population  had  soon  to  be 
drawn  upon  to  recruit  the  thinning  ranks.  In  April, 
1862,  conscription  was  resorted  to,  and  at  the  end 
of  the  war  boys  and  old  men  were  serving  in  the 
field.  It  had  even  been  proposed  to  arm  the  slaves. 
At  home,  alone  on  the  plantation,  the  women  toiled 
and  suffered  to  care  for  the  children,  manage  the  es- 
tate, and  aid  the  soldiers  in  the  field.  Of  all  the 
heroism  of  women  which  history  records,  none  any- 
where compares  in  courage  and  steadfastness  with  the 
heroism  of  the  women  of  the  South  during  the  Civil 
War.  The  negroes,  for  the  most  part,  remained  faith- 
ful, though  delighting  to  give  secret  aid  to  the  Union 
soldiers;  and  throughout  the  war  life,  property,  and 
the  honor  of  women  were  uniformly  respected  and 
safeguarded  by  the  blacks.  It  was  the  events  con- 
nected with  reconstruction  rather  than  the  Civil  War 
or  emancipation  that  bred  enmity  between  the  races 
in  the  South. 

35  537 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Discussion  of  the  legal  merits  of  a  controversy 
which  has  been  settled,  beyond  peradventure,  not  by 
law  but  by  sheer  physical  force,  must  always  appear 
somewhat  academic.  It  may  be  pointed  out,  how- 
ever, that  the  constitutional  principle  for  which  the 
South  contended,  and  which  the  Civil  War  for  all 
time  repudiated,  never  rested  upon  any  undisputed 
canon  of  constitutional  interpretation,  and  consist- 
ently ignored  the  steady  development  of  American 
political  thought.  Doubtless,  when  the  Constitution 
was  adopted,  there  were  few  people  in  any  State  who 
looked  upon  the  new  union  as  any  more  "perpetual" 
than  that  of  the  confederation  which  preceded  it. 
The  United  States  had  tried  one  form  of  national 
government,  had  found  it  fatally  defective,  and  had 
replaced  it  by  another.  There  is  little  in  the  history 
of  the  period  to  indicate  that  the  States  which  came 
in  under  the  "new  roof"  looked  upon  the  structure 
as  anything  more  than  a  better  arrangement,  a 
"more  perfect"  union,  from  which  they  could,  how- 
ever, withdraw,  if  they  chose,  should  it  prove  un- 
satisfactory. Down  to  the  time  of  the  Civil  War, 
the  North  as  well  as  the  South  had  its  advocates  of 
nullification  and  disunion,  its  champions  of  strict 
construction,  its  expounders  of  State  rights.  What 
the  South  failed  to  see,  however,  was  that  the  whole 
course  of  national  development  was  steadily  making 
the  State-rights  doctrine  practically  unworkable,  and 
that  secession  would  be  resisted,  not  because  the  Con- 
stitution in  terms  or  by  implication  forbade  it,  but 
because  national  self-interest  demanded  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  Union.  Into  this  broader  life  of  national- 
ity the  old  South  never  entered.  It  lived  in  the  past, 
thought  in  the  past,  conceived  of  no  future  different 

538 


THE    WAR    FOR    THE    UNION 

from  the  past.  Its  constitutional  arguments  had 
much  logical  keenness  and  cogency,  but  they  sounded 
remote  and  unpractical  to  men  who  felt  that,  what- 
ever the  policy  of  the  moment,  the  nation  must  in  the 
nature  of  things  be  supreme. 

No  doubt  there  were  times  between  1789  and  1861 
when  this  centralizing  tendency  in  the  federal  gov- 
ernment threatened  to  work  fast  and  far,  and  when 
the  maintenance  of  the  States  as  vital,  distinctive 
parts  of  the  nation  seemed  endangered.  For  such 
excesses  the  stout  insistence  upon  the  constitutional 
rights  of  the  States  was  a  healthy  corrective.  No 
doubt,  too,  the  far-reaching  scope  of  Chief -justice 
Marshall's  great  decisions  seemed  to  many  to  jeop- 
ardize time-honored  rights  of  person  and  property 
by  transferring  the  ultimate  control  of  them  from 
the  State  to  the  United  States.  But  so  long  as  the 
Constitution  contained  within  itself  clear  and  ade- 
quate provision  for  its  own  amendment,  so  long  as 
the  principle  of  majority  rule  in  matters  of  political 
discretion  prevailed,  secession  was  revolution,  justi- 
fiable only  if  successful.  It  was  the  inestimable  ser- 
vice of  the  Civil  War  to  emancipate  the  political 
thought  of  the  South  from  .slavery  to  an  outgrown 
theory,  to  show  that  a  strong  national  government 
is  no  menace  to  the  liberty  of  any  loyal  State,  and  to 
insist  upon  the  obedience  of  all  citizens  as  the  indis- 
pensable prerequisite  to  national  health,  efficiency, 
and  success. 


XXIII 

RECONSTRUCTION 

THE  close  of  the  Civil  War  left  the  United  States, 
notwithstanding  the  overwhelming  victory  of  the 
North,  with  many  serious  problems.  The  army  was 
quickly  and  quietly  disbanded,  and  the  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  soldiers  returned  to  civil  life  to  find  em- 
ployment as  best  they  might ;  but  the  situation  was 
as  abnormal  as  it  was  peaceful.  There  was  an  enor- 
mous debt  to  be  paid  and  specie  payment  to  be  re- 
sumed, and  both  as  soon  as  practicable  without 
financial  disturbance.  The  cessation  of  the  extraor- 
dinary demand  for  war  materials  of  all  sorts  neces- 
sitated the  speedy  diversion  of  capital  and  labor  to 
new  fields.  Both  domestic  and  foreign  trade,  the 
latter  in  particular  greatly  affected  during  the  war 
by  the  depredations  of  Confederate  cruisers  and 
privateers,  needed  to  be  brought  back  to  their  nor- 
mal channels.  The  North  and  South  must  not  only 
live  together,  but  trade  with  each  other.  The  great 
danger  was,  not  that  the  readjustment  would  be 
delayed,  but  that  it  would  come  suddenly  and  vio- 
lently, with  financial  stringency,  commercial  disaster, 
and  industrial  disorder  following  in  its  train.  The 
United  States  had  been  successful  in  a  great  war: 
could  it  achieve  equal  success  in  the  more  prosaic 
field  of  political  and  economic  reorganization? 

54o 


RECONSTRUCTION 

Of  all  the  problems  raised  by  the  war,  however, 
none  were  more  serious  or  complicated  than  those 
connected  with  the  political  reorganization  of  the 
southern  States  and  the  treatment  of  the  negroes. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  war  the  federal  govern- 
ment had  felt  it  necessary,  for  political  reasons,  to 
deny  the  possibility  of  secession  in  fact  as  well  as  in 
theory.  The  "so-called  Confederacy,"  "the  pre- 
tended government,"  and  the  like,  are  phrases  which 
occur  frequently  in  the  statutes  and  other  documents 
of  the  time.  So,  after  the  war  was  over,  many  Re- 
publican leaders  insisted  that,  be  the  legal  or  consti- 
tutional status  of  the  South  what  it  might,  the  South 
had  not  in  fact  seceded,  but  had  only  tried  to  secede ; 
and  this  view  was  later  taken  by  the  Supreme  Court. 
Whatever  the  worth  of  this  contention  as  a  legal 
theory,  it  was  clear  enough  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  States  of  the  Confederacy  had  had  for  four  years 
no  political  connection  whatever  with  the  United 
States,  that  they  had  yielded  no  obedience  to  its 
laws,  but,  on  the  contrary,  had  established  and  main- 
tained a  government  of  their  own,  and  that  they  had 
been  recognized  as  belligerents  by  foreign  nations. 
If,  during  this  time,  they  had  continued  to  be  "in 
the  Union,"  it  could  only  be  because  of  some  legal 
fiction  new  to  American  experience,  and  hence  not  of 
undisputed  application. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  was  equally  clear  that  the 
relation  of  the  late  seceded  States  to  the  Union,  now 
that  they  had  been  overcome,  was  not  the  same  as 
it  had  been  before  the  war.  Their  constitutions,  for 
example,  still  recognized  slavery.  Their  laws  bound 
the  States  to  the  payment  of  debts  arising  from  the 
war  against  the  Union.     Should  these  States  be  al- 

54i 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

lowed  to  reorganize  their  governments  as  before  1861, 
and  continue  white  supremacy  and  negro  subjection  ? 
Should  Senators  and  Representatives,  as  soon  as  regu- 
larly chosen,  be  admitted  to  Congress?  Should  the 
South  be  allowed  to  vote  in  the  Presidential  election 
of  1868?  Or  should  the  States  which  for  four  years 
had  maintained  practical  independence  by  force  of 
arms  be  treated  as  conquered  territory,  to  be  organ- 
ized and  dealt  with  as  Congress  and  the  President 
might  see  fit,  and  in  the  way  that  would  best  insure 
the  perpetuation  of  the  principles  for  which  the  North 
had  fought?  These  were  questions  on  which  the 
Constitution  was  silent,  and  for  whose  answer  the 
history  of  the  United  States  thus  far  afforded  no 
precedent,  and,  for  that  matter,  hardly  a  guide. 

The  subject  of  the  political  treatment  of  the  South 
after  the  "insurrection"  or  "rebellion,"  as  it  was 
commonly  called,  had  been  put  down  was  early  con- 
sidered by  both  Congress  and  the  President.  In  De- 
cember, 1863,  Lincoln,  in  a  proclamation  granting 
amnesty,  with  certain  exceptions,  to  persons  who 
had  engaged  in  rebellion  against  the  United  States, 
declared  that  whenever,  in  any  of  the  seceded  States 
except  Virginia,  loyal  persons  not  less  in  number  than 
one-tenth  of  those  who  had  voted  in  the  Presidential 
election  of  i860  should  re-establish  a  State  govern- 
ment republican  in  form,  it  would  be  recognized  and 
protected  "as  the  true  government  of  the  State." 
Virginia  was  excepted  because  Lincoln  had  already 
recognized  there  the  loyal  "Pierpont"  government. 
It  was  further  suggested  that,  in  such  reorganization, 
'the  name  of  the  State,  the  boundary,  the  subdivi- 
sions, the  constitution,  and  the  general  code  of  laws, 
as  before  the  rebellion,  be  maintained"  so  far  as  pos- 

542 


RECONSTRUCTION 

sible;  but  Lincoln  was  careful  to  say  that  the  ad- 
mission of  Senators  and  Representatives  from  such 
State  was  not  for  the  Executive,  but  for  Congress,  to 
determine.  It  will  be  observed  that  no  mention  was 
made  of  negro  suffrage.  Arkansas  had  already  been 
reconstructed,  and  within  a  year  loyal  governments 
formed  in  accordance  with  this  proclamation  were 
recognized  in  Louisiana  and  Tennessee.  In  Lincoln's 
view,  the  Union  was  indesjtructible,  and  it  was  his 
duty  to  restore  the  southern  States  to  the  constitu- 
tional position  in  the  Union  which  they  had  tem- 
porarily abandoned. 

To  many,  however,  ten  per  cent,  of  the  voters 
seemed  too  slight  a  basis  on  which  to  found  a  loyal 
government  in  a  State  which  had  but  lately  taken 
arms  against  the  United  States.  In  Congress  there 
was  a  growing  feeling  that  reconstruction  was,  after 
all,  a  legislative  rather  than  an  Executive  act.  Ac- 
cordingly, in  July,  1864,  Congress  passed  a  bill  em- 
bodying a  different  plan.  In  each  State  the  President 
was  to  appoint  a  provisional  governor.  As  soon  as 
hostilities  in  the  State  had  ceased,  the  governor  was 
to  enroll  all  the  white  male  citizens,  and  request  each 
to  take  an  oath  to  support  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States.  If  a  majority  took  the  oath,  then  a 
convention  was  to  be  held,  under  the  supervision  of 
the  governor,  and  the  government  of  the  State  re- 
established. As  a  condition  of  such  reorganization, 
however,  the  convention  was  to  incorporate  in  the 
State  constitution  provisions  excluding  Confederate 
office-holders  from  voting  and  from  holding  office  as 
legislators  or  governor,  abolishing  slavery,  and  re- 
pudiating the  Confederate  debt.  If  a  majority  of  the 
voters   approved   this  revised   constitution   and   re- 

543 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

constructed  government,  the  President,  with  the  as- 
sent of  Congress,  was  to  recognize  it  by  proclamation 
as  "  the  constitutional  government  of  the  State,"  and 
the  State  was  then  to  be  allowed  to  choose  Senators, 
Representatives,  and  Presidential  electors.  The  bill 
further  emancipated  the  slaves  in  all  the  seceded 
States. 

The  difference  between  the  Congressional  plan  and 
Lincoln's  plan  was  fundamental.  Instead  of  allow- 
ing a  small  minority  of  the  voters,  if  loyal,  to  re- 
establish the  State  government  in  any  way  they  saw 
fit,  the  Wade- Davis  bill,  as  it  was  called  from  its 
principal  framers  and  advocates,  required  the  assent 
of  a  majority  of  the  voters  acting  through  a  con- 
vention, imposed  three  radical  conditions  on  the 
State,  gave  to  the  provisional  governor  direct  control 
over  every  detail  of  the  process  of  reconstruction, 
and  made  final  recognition  by  proclamation  of  the 
President  dependent  upon  the  previous  approval  of 
Congress.  Lincoln  killed  the  bill  by  a  "  pocket  veto," 
declaring  that  he  was  not  ready  to  be  "  inflexibly 
committed  to  any  single  plan  of  restoration,"  or  to 
ignore  the  reconstructed  governments  of  Arkansas 
and  Louisiana,  which  had  already  been  recognized. 
He  doubted  also  the  constitutional  competency  of 
Congress  to  abolish  slavery  by  statute. 

The  Wade -Davis  bill  contained  the  elements  of 
the  plan  of  reconstruction  which  Congress  more  and 
more  steadily  urged,  and  which  in  the  end  came  to 
prevail.  It  is  possible  that,  had  Lincoln  approved 
the  bill,  a  compromise  might  later  have  been  reached 
which  would  have  been  beneficial  to  all  concerned. 
Lincoln  himself  seems  to  have  had  some  misgivings 
about  the  propriety  of  his  veto.     Congress,  however, 

544 


RECONSTRUCTION 

was  not  prevented  from  acting.  In  February,  1865, 
a  joint  resolution  declared  the  seceded  States  to  be 
not  entitled  to  representation  in  the  electoral  college 
for  the  choice  of  President  and  Vice-president. 
Recognition  of  Virginia  had  previously  been  with- 
drawn. In  March  the  destitute  and  helpless  con- 
dition of  the  freed  negroes,  or  "  freedmen, "  led  to  the 
organization  of  a  freedmen's  bureau  as  a  branch  of 
the  War  Department.  The  commissioner  in  charge 
was  authorized  to  take  possession  of  abandoned  lands 
in  the  late  insurrectionary  States,  and  to  allot  them 
to  the  freedmen  in  quantities  not  exceeding  forty  acres 
to  each,  while  the  Secretary  of  War  was  empowered 
to  relieve  distress  by  the  issue  of  provisions,  fuel,  and 
clothing.  It  was  a  well-intentioned  act  of  humanity, 
but  the  ignorance  of  the  negroes  went  far  to  frus- 
trate its  purpose.  The  negroes  gathered  about  the 
offices  of  the  bureau,  refused  in  many  cases  to  work, 
told  how  ''the  government"  was  to  give  each  man 
"forty  acres  and  a  mule,"  and  demanded  "the  pro- 
visions of  the  Constitution."  On  December  18th 
the  Thirteenth  Amendment,  forever  abolishing  sla- 
very "within  the  United  States  or  any  place  sub- 
ject to  their  jurisdiction,"  was  formally  declared 
to  be  in  force,  though  Seward,  in  order  to  obtain 
the  three  -  fourths  majority  required  by  the  Con- 
stitution, was  obliged  to  count  the  eleven  former 
slave  States  which  had  ratified  the  amendment. 
Whatever  the  value  of  Executive  reconstruction  in 
the  mind  of  Congress,  these  eleven  States  were  clearly 
"good  enough  to  count"  when  the  ratification  of  a 
constitutional  amendment  was  involved.  It  was 
easy  to  see,  however,  that  the  presence  of  the  negro 
was  immensely  to  complicate  the  process  of  recon- 

545 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

struction,  though  none,  perhaps,  could  foresee  the 
extremes  to  which  reconstruction  was  shortly  to  go, 
still  less  the  heritage  of  hate  which  it  was  to  leave  for 
the  coming  generation. 

Andrew  Johnson,  whom  the  tragedy  of  Lincoln's 
death  unexpectedly  elevated  to  the  Presidency,  was 
ill-fitted  to  be  at  the  head  of  the  executive  depart- 
ment in  a  time  of  strong  sectional  feeling  and  grow- 
ing partisan  vindictiveness.  A  representative  of  the 
"poor  whites"  of  Tennessee,  and  self-taught,  his 
social  position  had  from  the  beginning  placed  him 
in  opposition  to  the  slave  -  holding  class,  while  his 
strong  Union  sentiments,  joined  to  his  official  promi- 
nence as  military  governor  of  his  State,  had  brought 
upon  him  the  enmity  of  all  who  in  Tennessee  had 
favored  secession.  Could  he  have  had  his  way,  some 
of  the  Confederate  leaders  would  have  been  hanged, 
and  for  a  time  it  was  not  certain  that  such  would 
not  be  their  fate.  The  Republicans  had  nominated 
him  for  Vice-president,  not  because  he  was  a  Repub- 
lican, for  he  was  not,  but  in  order  to  emphasize  the 
national  scope  of  the  party  and  win  the  support  of 
the  "war  Democrats."  His  views  on  many  of  the 
constitutional  questions  which  arose  during  his  ad- 
ministration are  now  conceded  to  have  been,  in  the 
main,  sounder  than  those  of  his  opponents,  but  his 
narrowness  and  coarseness,  and,  above  all,  his  violent 
temper  and  speech,  early  plunged  him  into  a  strug- 
gle with  Congress  and  the  country  which  has  no 
counterpart  in  our  history,  and  the  incidents  of 
which  it  is  even  now  painful  to  recall. 

Although  Johnson  had  little  interest  in  the  freed- 
men,  it  was  his  intention  to  carry  out  Lincoln's  policy, 
with  whose  principles   he  professed   entire   accord. 

546 


RECONSTRUCTION 

Amnesty  for  all  but  certain  classes  of  persons  was 
proclaimed,  the  blockade  of  southern  ports  discon- 
tinued, and  the  privilege  of  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus 
again  granted.  By  the  middle  of  July,  1865,  mili- 
tary governors,  charged  with  the  duty  of  summon- 
ing conventions  and  re-establishing  loyal  State  gov- 
ernments, had  been  appointed  in  North  Carolina, 
South  Carolina,  Georgia,  Florida,  Alabama,  Missis- 
sippi, and  Texas,  and  the  Pierpont  government  in 
Virginia  had  been  again  recognized.  Obviously,  it 
was  the  intention  of  the  President  to  bring  the 
States  back  into  the  Union  as  soon  as  possible. 
On  April  2d  a  proclamation  formally  declared  the 
rebellion  at  an  end.  Senators  and  Representatives 
from  the  reconstructed  States,  many  of  them  late 
Confederate  soldiers,  appeared  at  Washington  in 
December  with  their  credentials  and  demanded  seats 
in  Congress — a  situation  which  strained  sadly  the 
temper  of  the  Republican  leaders.  In  the  mean 
time,  however,  the  legislation  of  some  of  the  south- 
ern States  regarding  the  freedmen  was  such  as  to 
cause  suspicion  and  alarm.  It  was  widely  believed 
in  the  South  that  the  negro  would  work  only  under 
compulsion,  and  that  he  would  speedily  become  a 
pauper  or  a  vagrant  if  allowed  to  do  as  he  pleased; 
while  the  whites  were  as  a  whole  unalterably  op- 
posed, of  course,  to  associating  with  the  negroes  on 
terms  of  equality.  In  a  number  of  States,  accord- 
ingly, acts  were  passed  ostensibly  to  protect  life  and 
property  from  idle,  criminal,  or  vagrant  negroes, 
but  having  the  effect  in  practice  of  reviving  many  of 
the  restrictive  and  penal  features  of  the  old  slave 
codes,  and  in  any  case  of  keeping  the  freedmen  in 
severe  subjection.     To  compel  a  negro  to  obtain  and 

547 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

carry  about  with  him  a  license  in  order  to  work  or 
go  from  place  to  place,  to  compel  him  to  work  out 
a  fine  by  labor  for  private  persons,  was  virtually  to 
reduce  him  to  servitude.  To  many  Republicans  in 
Congress  it  seemed  as  though  the  work  of  emancipa- 
tion was  to  be  undone.  It  is  true  that  in  some  of  the 
States  these  "  vagrancy  acts"  were  set  aside  by  the 
military  governors,  but  this  was  clearly  only  a  tem- 
porary expedient.  The  Thirteenth  Amendment  did 
not  determine  the  political  or  civil  status  of  the 
negro,  but  only  insured  his  freedom.  Congress,  how- 
ever, was* authorized  to  enforce  the  amendment  "by 
appropriate  legislation,"  and  the  conviction  rapidly 
deepened  that  the  civil  rights  of  the  negro  must  be 
protected  by  national  law. 

The  great  Republican  majority  in  the  Thirty-ninth 
Congress,  which  met  in  December,  1865,  contained 
an  unusual  number  of  able  leaders.  Among  the 
Senators  were  William  Pitt  Fessenden,  of  Maine; 
Charles  Sumner,  of  Massachusetts;  George  F.  Ed- 
munds, of  Vermont;  and  John  Sherman,  of  Ohio. 
The  membership  of  the  House  included  Thaddeus 
Stevens  and  William  D.  Kelley,  of  Pennsylvania; 
Henry  L.  Dawes  and  George  S.  Boutwell,  of  Massa- 
chusetts; James  G.  Blaine,  of  Maine;  Justin  S.  Mor- 
rill, of  Vermont;  Roscoe  Conkling,  of  New  York; 
William  B.  Allison,  of  Iowa;  and  James  A.  Garfield 
and  Rutherford  B.  Hayes,  of  Ohio,  the  latter  serving 
for  the  first  time.  Early  in  February,  1866,  a  new 
Freedmen's  Bureau  bill,  greatly  enlarging  the  scope 
and  strengthening  the  powers  of  the  existing  bureau 
was  passed  and  sent  to  the  President.  The  bill  vir- 
tually put  the  negroes  under  the  military  protection 
ot  the  United  States,  and  authorized  interference  on 

548 


RECONSTRUCTION 

their  behalf  in  all  cases  in  which  their  civil  rights 
were  involved.     Johnson,  in  a  strong,  well-reasoned 
message,  vetoed  the  bill,  and  an  attempt  to  pass  it 
over  the  veto  failed.     The  principal  objections  to  the 
bill  were  that  the  new  machinery  which  it  provided 
was  unnecessarily  elaborate  and  expensive,  and  that 
the  powers  given  to  the  bureau  amounted  to  the  es- 
tablishment of  military  rule  in  districts  where  there 
was  no  war.     Johnson  could  not  stop  here,  however, 
but  in  a  public  speech  denounced  the  course  of  Con- 
gress.     He  soon  had  a  measure  of  much  more  far- 
reaching  importance,  and  with  much  more  powerful 
support,  to  consider.     On  April  9th  Congress  passed 
a  bill  "to  protect  all  persons  in  the  United    States 
in  their  civil  rights  and  furnish  the  means  of  their 
vindication."     The  bill  declared  that   "all  persons 
born  in  the  United  States,  and  not  subject  to  any 
foreign    power,   excluding    Indians   not  taxed,"  are 
citizens  of  the  United  States;   and  that  "such  citi- 
zens, of  every  race  and  color,  without  regard  to  any 
previous  condition  of  slavery  or  involuntary  servi- 
tude, .  .  .  shall  have  the  same  right,  in  every  State 
and  Territory  in  the  United  States,  to  make  and  en- 
force contracts,  to  sue,  be  parties,  and  give  evidence, 
to  inherit,  purchase,  lease,  sell,  hold,  and  convey  real 
and  personal  property,  and  to  full  and  equal  benefit 
of  all  laws  and  proceedings  for  the  security  of  person 
and  property,  as  is  enjoyed  by  white  citizens,  and 
shall  be  subject  to  like  punishment,  pains,  and  penal- 
ties, and  to  none  other,  any  law,  statute,  ordinance, 
regulation,  or  custom  to  the  contrary  notwithstand- 
ing."    The  penalty  for  violation  of  the  act  might  be 
a  fine  of  a  thousand  dollars  or  imprisonment  for  a  year ; 
or  both;  and  the  army  and  navy  might  be  used  if 

549 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

necessary  to  enforce  the  act.  Thoroughgoing  as  was 
the  act,  it  was  doubtless  a  logical  necessity  in  view  of 
the  drift  of  southern  legislation,  and  unquestionably 
within  the  constitutional  competency  of  Congress. 
Johnson,  however,  though  reported  to  favor  the  bill 
while  it  was  being  considered,  inadvisedly  vetoed 
it.  The  veto  was  overridden  by  large  majorities  in 
both  Houses.  The  native-born  negro,  so  lately  a 
slave,  was  now  a  citizen,  with  civil  rights  identical  in 
terms  with  those  of  the  whites. 

But  the  Civil  Rights  act,  being  only  a  statute, 
might  be  repealed  at  any  time,  and  there  was  well- 
grounded  fear  lest  the  admission  of  southern  mem- 
bers, most  of  them  opposed  to  the  Republican  policy 
which  was  now  rapidly  being  unfolded,  would  re- 
verse the  party  majority  in  Congress.  The  only  way, 
apparently,  to  prevent  this  was  further  to  amend 
the  Constitution  so  as  to  protect  the  negro  as  a  citi- 
zen, and  practically  force  the  States  to  make  him  a 
voter.  There  was  in  this  a  mixture  of  belief  in  the 
civilizing  influence  of  the  suffrage  and  of  the  ability 
of  the  negro  to  use  the  ballot  wisely,  and  of  convic- 
tion that  further  protection  of  the  negro  was  neces- 
sary; but  the  desire  for  party  supremacy  was  at 
least  as  great  as  the  humanitarian  motive.  The 
Fourteenth  Amendment  was  agreed  upon  in  June, 
1866,  and  submitted  to  the  States  for  ratification. 
The  amendment  defined  citizenship  of  the  United 
States  and  forbade  State  encroachment  upon  it; 
made  a  new  basis  of  apportionment  of  members  of 
the  House  of  Representatives;  provided  for  the  re- 
duction of  the  representation  of  any  State  which 
should  deny,  "except  for  participation  in  rebellion 
or  other  crime,"  the  right  of  citizens  of  the  United 

S5o 


RECONSTRUCTION 

States  to  vote  in  federal  or  State  elections ;  debarred 
from  office  former  federal  or  State  officials  who  had 
aided  the  Confederate  cause ;  and  declared  that,  while 
the  validity  of  the  public  debt  of  the  United  States 
should  not  be  questioned,  the  entire  debt  incurred  in 
aid  of  the  Confederacy  should  be  held  "  illegal  and 
void."  A  supplementary  act  continuing  the  f reed- 
men's  bureau  for  two  years  with  enlarged  powers, 
but  without  the  objectionable  features  of  the  earlier 
bill  which  Johnson  had  vetoed,  was  also  passed,  not- 
withstanding the  objections  of  the  President. 

The  legislature  of  Tennessee  promptly  ratified  the 
Fourteenth  Amendment,  and  July  24,  1866,  the.State 
was  formally  restored  "to  her  former  proper,  prac- 
tical relations  to  the  Union."  The  amendment  was 
rejected,  however,  by  Virginia,  North  Carolina,  South 
Carolina,  Georgia,  Florida,  Alabama,  Mississippi, 
Louisiana,  and  Texas,  as  well  as  by  Delaware,  Mary- 
land, and  Kentucky.  California  did  not  act  on  it, 
and  the  legislatures  of  New  Jersey  and  Ohio  rescinded 
their  ratifications.  It  seemed  not  unlikely  that, 
with  such  wide-spread  opposition  in  different  parts  of 
the  country,  the  proposed  amendment  might  fail  of 
adoption.  To  prevent  such  a  disaster,  it  was  deter- 
mined to  make  the  acceptance  of  the  amendment  a 
further  condition  of  the  restoration  of  the  late  seceded 
States.  On  March  2,  1867,  Congress  passed  the 
first  of  the  so-called  Reconstruction  Acts.  The  ten 
States  were  divided  into  five  military  districts, 
with  an  officer  not  lower  in  rank  than  brigadier- 
general  in  command  of  each.  The  commander  was 
to  maintain  law  and  order,  and  might,  if  he  chose, 
establish  military  courts  for  the  purpose.  Whenever 
a  convention,  chosen  by  the  people  of  the  State  with- 

55i 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

out  regard  to  race  or  color,  should  have  drawn  up  a 
constitution  which  granted  the  suffrage  to  negroes  on 
the  same  terms  as  to  whites,  and  the  constitution  had 
been  adopted  by  popular  vote,  the  State,  with  the 
approval  of  Congress,  might  be  admitted  to  the  Union, 
provided  the  legislature  had  ratified  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment,  and  the  amendment  had  also  become 
a  part  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 
Until  such  time,  any  civil  government  in  the  State 
was  to  be  regarded  as  provisional  only. 

No  more  remarkable  legislation  was  ever  enacted 
by  Congress.  For  the  purpose  of  compelling  the 
South  to  give  the  ballot  to  the  negro,  a  military  gov- 
ernment was  established,  with  military  courts  in  place 
of  civil  at  the  discretion  of  the  commander;  negroes 
were  to  be  given  the  franchise,  at  first  by  Congres- 
sional command,  eventually  by  a  State  constitution 
on  whose  acceptance  the  negroes  were  themselves  to 
vote;  a  proposed  amendment  not  yet  a  part  of  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  was  to  be  ratified, 
although  any  other  State  might  reject  it  if  it  saw  fit ; 
and  even  then  the  State  which  had  done  all  these 
things  was  to  be  kept  out  of  the  Union  until  enough 
other  States  had  approved  the  amendment  to  make 
up  the  necessary  three-fourths  majority.  Johnson 
vetoed  the  bill,  but  it  was  at  once  passed  over  the  veto. 

Between  the  President  and  Congress,  holding  as 
they  did  diametrically  opposed  theories  of  recon- 
struction, there  had  by  this  time  developed  a  serious 
breach.  Johnson,  unfortunately,  was  not  wise  enough 
to  see  that,  in  a  controversy  between  the  Executive 
and  the  legislature,  the  legislature  is  pretty  certain 
to  win  in  the  long  run,  and  his  course  was  such  as  to 
make  the  outcome  only  the  more  inevitable.     The 

552 


RECONSTRUCTION 

State  governments  which  had  been  established  under 
the  authority  of  the  President  were  in  the  hands  of 
Southern  whites,  who  had  availed  themselves  of  the 
amnesty  which  the  President  had  proclaimed.  South- 
ern legislation  still  discriminated  sharply  against  the 
negro.     Northern  white  men  who  had  gone  to  the 
South  after  the  close  of  the  war— "  carpet-baggers," 
as   they  were   called— found  themselves  objects  of 
suspicion,   and  there  were  startling  stories  of  out- 
rages against  persons  and  property.     A  riot  in  New 
Orleans  on  July  30th,  following  an  illegal  attempt  to 
reconvene  a  constitutional  convention  which  had  ad- 
journed in  1864,  had  resulted  in  the  killing  or  wound- 
ing, of   some   two   hundred  persons,   most  of  them 
negroes.     It  was  easy  for   Republicans  to  say  that 
the  "  rebels"  were  again  in  the  saddle,  and  that  John- 
son's policy  was  breeding,  not  peace,  but  lawlessness. 
In  August  and  September,    1866,  Johnson  made  a 
journey  in  the  North— popularly  dubbed  ''swinging 
around  the  circle" — and  in  his  speeches  not  only  de- 
fended his  course,  btit  indulged  in  coarse  and  bitter 
attacks  on  his  opponents  and  the  "  radical  Congress." 
In  the  excited  state  of  public  feeling  such  a  tour  was 
extremely  unwise,  and  especially  so  for  a  President 
who,  like  Johnson,  could  not  keep  his  temper  or  his 
dignity  in  public  speech,  and  who  had  in  no  part  of 
the  Union  any  particular  popular  support.     The  Re- 
publican national  committee  issued  an  address  set- 
ting forth  the  grounds  of  the  dispute  between  the 
President  and  Congress.     The  fall  elections  were  a 
triumph  for  the  Republicans,  and  with  this  mandate 
they  entered  vigorously  upon  the  policy  of  which  the 
Reconstruction  act  of  March  2,  1867,  already  men- 
tioned, was  the  first  fruits. 
36  553 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

It  was  felt  to  be  necessary  to  curb  the  President 
as  well  as  the  South,  though  in  so  doing  Congress 
rode  rough-shod  over  constitutional  restraints,  and 
in  the  end  brought  discredit  upon  itself  and  the  politi- 
cal party  that  controlled  it.  On  the  same  day  that 
the  Reconstruction  act  became  law,  the  Tenure  of 
Office^  act  deprived  the  President  of  the  power  of 
removing  persons  from  office  without  the  consent  of 
the  Senate — a  power  which  had  been  recognized  as  a 
constitutional  privilege  ever  since  the  foundation  of 
the  government.  Even  the  cabinet  officers,  the  in- 
timate personal  advisers  of  the  President,  were  by  the 
act  allowed  to  hold  office  until  a  month  after  the  ex- 
piration of  the  Presidential  term.  An  incidental  re- 
sult of  the  act  was  the  development  of  a  practice 
called  "Senatorial  courtesy,"  under  which  federal 
appointments  from  any  State  are  made  to  depend  on 
the  approval  of  the  Senator  from  that  State.  A  pro- 
vision in  the  Army  Appropriation  bill,  passed  on  the 
same  day,  virtually  deprived  the  President  of  the 
command  of  the  army,  and  disbanded  the  militia  in 
the  late  rebellious  States.  The  former  act  was  passed 
over  a  veto,  the  latter  was  signed  under  protest  in 
order  to  save  the  appropriations.  There  is  little  to 
be  said  for  either  the  constitutionality  or  the  ex- 
pediency of  these  measures,  although  there  were  many 
who  felt  that  the  danger  to  the  country  was  so  ex- 
treme as  to  justify  them.  The  Territories  and  the 
District  of  Columbia  were  given  universal — that  is, 
negro  —  suffrage.  Nebraska,  with  the  requirement 
of  negro  suffrage,  was  admitted  as  a  State,  also  over 
the  veto,  but  Colorado,  which  also  had  applied,  was 
kept  out  until  1876.  A  second  Reconstruction  act, 
enlarging  and  elaborating  the  provisions  of  the  first, 

5^4 


RECONSTRUCTION 

was  passed  March  23d.  The  military  commanders, 
who  throughout  this  trying  period  acted  with  praise- 
worthy moderation  and  discretion,  had  difficulty  in 
interpreting  the  acts,  and  executive  instructions  ex- 
plaining them  were  presently  issued,  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  cabinet  except  Stanton,  the  Secretary  of 
War,  approving.  Congress,  however,  adjudged  the 
instructions  a  serious  limitation  on  the  efficiency  of 
the  acts,  as  indeed  they  were,  and  on  July  19th  put  in 
force  a  third  Reconstruction  act  interpreting  the 
other  two,  and  adding  to  the  powers  of  the  com-, 
manders.  To  both  of  these  measures  Johnson  inter- 
posed his  veto,  but  without  avail.  His  character  had 
ceased  to  carry  weight  and  his  arguments  were  un- 
heeded. 

The  Tenure  of  Office  act  allowed  the  President, 
during  a  recess  of  Congress,  to  suspend  from  office 
any  official  guilty  of  misconduct  or  incapable  of 
properly  performing  his  duties.  On  August  12th 
Johnson  suspended  Stanton,  the  Secretary  of  War, 
and  appointed  General  Grant  to  perform  the  duties 
of  the  office  ad  interim.  Stanton,  a  capable  official 
of  narrow  mind,  had  for  some  time  been  aggres- 
sively out  of  sympathy  with  the  President  and  most 
of  the  cabinet,  and,  had  he  been  governed  by  a 
common  sense  of  propriety,  should  long  since  have 
resigned.  A  request  for  his  resignation,  made  by  the 
President  a  few  days  before  his  suspension,  had  been 
"  contemptuously  refused."  Congress  had  adjourned 
on  July  20th  to  November  21st;  and  as  a  suspension 
from  office  could  by  law  continue  only  until  the  next 
session  thereafter,  the  question  was  sure  to  come  up 
again  soon.  Stanton  was  confident  of  Republican 
support,  and  appears  to  have  been  a  ready  instru- 

555 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

ment  in  the  hands  of  the  radical  Republican  leaders 
for  the  furtherance  of  their  designs  against  the  Presi- 
dent. 

While  the  overthrow  of  the  President  was  thus 
preparing  in  Congress,  the  Reconstruction  acts  were 
being  put  into  operation  in  the  South.  Attempts  to 
invoke  the  interposition  of  the  Supreme  Court  failed. 
When  the  registration  of  voters  was  completed,  it 
appeared  that  in  South  Carolina,  Florida,  Alabama, 
Louisiana,  and  Mississippi  the  negroes  were  in  a  ma- 
jority, while  in  the  remaining  States  the  white  ma- 
jority was  small.  It  must  be  remembered  that  a  large 
proportion  of  the  leading  Southerners,  being  unable 
to  take  the  oath  prescribed  by  the  Reconstruction 
acts,  were  still  disfranchised,  so  that  "  poor  whites," 
"  carpet  -  baggers, "  "  scalawags ' '  —  southern  whites 
who  acted  politically  with  the  f reedmen — and  negroes 
formed  the  larger  part  of  the  electorate.  In  every 
State  substantial  majorities  in  favor  of  the  conven- 
tions which  were  to  revise  the  constitutions  were  re- 
corded at  the  elections.  Most  of  the  members  of  the 
conventions  were  negroes  or  men  of  little  political 
experience,  and  the  constitutions  which  they  drew  up 
were  radical  in  their  provisions  regulating  the  suffrage 
and  denning  the  legal  and  social  rights  of  the  negroes. 
The  votes  on  the  adoption  of  the  constitutions  were 
accompanied  by  much  fraud  and  " repeating,"  dis- 
honest practices  being  facilitated  by  the  fact  that 
State  officers  were  voted  for  at  the  same  time. 

The  Reconstruction  acts  required,  for  the  adoption 
of  a  new  State  constitution,  the  affirmative  vote  of  a 
majority  of  the  registered  voters.  In  Alabama,  the 
first  State  to  vote,  enough  voters  stayed  away  from 
the  polls  to  reduce  the  total  vote  below  the  required 

556 


RECONSTRUCTION 

proportion,  with  the  result  that  the  constitution  was 
rejected.  Thereupon  Congress  passed  an  act  pro- 
viding that  a  constitution  should  be  held  to  have 
been  adopted  if  a  majority  of  those  who  voted  had 
voted  in  favor  of  it ;  and  this  act  was  applied  to  the 
election  already  held  in  Alabama,  and  to  the  election 
in  Arkansas  held  after  the  bill  became  law,  but  before 
its  passage  was  known  in  that  State.  By  the  end 
of  May,  1868,  reconstructed  constitutions  had  been 
ratified  in  North  Carolina,  South  Carolina,  Georgia, 
Florida,  and  Louisiana.  In  Mississippi  the  constitu- 
tion was  rejected. 

Before  the  new  constitutions  were  acted  upon  the 
struggle  between  Congress  and  President  Johnson 
had  reached  its  culmination.  On  January  7,  1867, 
James  M.  Ashley,  a  Representative  from  Ohio,  im- 
peached the  President  of  high  crimes  and  mis- 
demeanors, charging  him  with  "a  usurpation  of 
power  and  violation  of  law,"  in  that  he  had  used 
corruptly  the  powers  of  appointment,  pardon,  and 
veto,  "corruptly  disposed  of  public  property  of  the 
United  States,"  " corruptly  interfered  in  elections," 
and  "committed  acts  which,  in  contemplation  of  the 
Constitution,  are  high  crimes  and  misdemeanors." 
The  charges  were  referred  to  the  Committee  on  the 
Judiciary  for  investigation,  but  it  was  not  until  No- 
vember 25th,  after  the  recess,  that  a  report  sustaining 
the  charges  was  made.  The  report  was  then  dis- 
agreed to,  and  the  matter  referred  to  the  Committee 
on  Reconstruction.  The  Senate,  as  had  been  an- 
ticipated, had  refused  to  approve  of  the  suspension  of 
Stanton  the  previous  August,  and  Stanton  had  re- 
sumed his  duties  as  Secretary  of  War.  On  Feb- 
ruary   1,    1868,   Johnson,   believing   the  Tenure    of 

557 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

Office  act  to  be  unconstitutional,  and  not  unwill- 
ing to  put  it  to  a  test,  removed  Stanton,  and  appoint- 
ed Lorenzo  Thomas,  adjutant -general  of  the  army, 
as  secretary  ad  interim.  This  action  Stanton,  with 
a  curious  sense  of  official  propriety,  promptly  com- 
municated to  the  House,  and  on  the  next  day  a  reso- 
lution of  impeachment  was  reported  by  the  Commitee 
on  Reconstruction  and  agreed  to.  The  trial  before 
the  Senate  began  March  30th,  Chief -justice  Chase  pre- 
siding. The  prosecution  on  the  part  of  the  House 
was  conducted  by  "managers/'  prominent  among 
whom  was  Benjamin  F.  Butler,  of  Massachusetts,  an 
able,  coarse,  vituperative  criminal  lawyer.  #  Johnson 
was  represented  by  able  counsel,  among  them  William 
M.  Evarts  and  Benjamin  R.  Curtis.  The  charges, 
eleven  in  number,  chiefly  concerned  Johnson's  al- 
leged violation  of  law  and  the  Constitution  and  usur- 
pation of  power  in  the  removal  of  Stanton.  In  ad- 
dition, there  were  charges  of  infractions  of  official 
propriety  based  upon  inflammatory  speeches  in  which 
Johnson  had  denounced  Congress  and  its  policy.  So 
far  as  the  charges  related  to  constitutional  matters, 
they  were  not  novel,  but  had  been  foreshadowed  in 
the  debate  on  the  veto  of  the  Civil  Rights  bill  two 
years  before. 

The  trial  continued  until  May  1 2th.  As  it  went  on, 
the  Republican  leaders  saw  that  the  charges  would 
probably  not  be  sustained.  Little  as  the  country  at 
large  respected  or  cared  for  Johnson,  people  were 
coming  to  realize  that  it  was  a  serious  matter  to  im- 
peach the  President  of  the  United  States;  and  this 
feeling,  together  with  the  able  arguments  of  Johnson's 
counsel— in  striking  contrast  to  the  abusive  language 
of  the  prosecution — caused  a  strong  reaction  in  his 

558 


RECONSTRUCTION 

favor.  Of  all  the  dangers  which  heated  imagination 
or  partisan  zeal  could  conjure  as  likely  to  follow  a 
verdict  of  acquittal,  the  possible  use  by  the  President 
of  the  military  power  to  usurp  authority  and  wreak 
vengeance  on  his  enemies  was  the  only  one  which 
could  have  any  popular  appeal;  and  the  reported  in- 
tention of  Johnson  to  nominate  General  J.  M.  Scho- 
fLeld,  an  able  soldier  and  conservative  man,  to  succeed 
Stanton,  did  much  to  quiet  apprehension.  On  May 
1 6th  a  vote  was  taken  on  the  eleventh  article  of  the 
charges,  the  one  on  which  there  was  thought  to  be 
most  likelihood  of  agreement.  The  vote  was  35 
"guilty,"  19  "not  guilty"— less  than  the  two-thirds 
required  by  the  Constitution.  Ten  days  later  votes 
on  the  second  and  third  articles  showed  similar  re- 
sults. Thereupon  the  Senate  as  a  court  adjourned, 
and  the  great  impeachment  trial  was  at  an  end.  Stan- 
ton at  once  resigned  and  General  Schofield  took  his 
place. 

So  far  as  Johnson  was  concerned,  the  acquittal 
was  a  fruitless  victory.  He  had  not,  indeed,  been 
found  guilty  of  high  crimes  and  misdemeanors  as 
charged,  but  he  had  failed  to  commend  to  the  sup- 
port of  any  considerable  number  of  people  either  his 
motives  or  his  policy.  Read  in  the  cooler  atmosphere 
of  the  present  time,  the  constitutional  arguments  of 
his  veto  messages  are  seen  to  be  in  large  part  sound, 
and  a  juster  appreciation  of  their  merits  has  served 
somewhat  to  rehabilitate  his  reputation.  There  can 
be  little  doubt,  however,  that  reconstruction  was 
properly  a  legislative  rather  than  an  executive  func- 
tion, and  that  Congress,  grossly  as  it  abused  its  power 
both  before  and  after  the  impeachment  trial,  was 
correct  in  thinking  that  Johnson's  policy,  if  persisted 

559 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

in,  would  prevent  such  a  political  restoration  of  the 
South  as  would  stand  the  test  of  time. 

With  the  assurance  of  no  further  effective  opposi- 
tion from  the  President,  Congress  pushed  on  its  work. 
On  June  22,  1868,  Arkansas,  having  ratified  the  Four- 
teenth Amendment,  was  admitted  to  representation 
in  Congress.  Three  days  later  representation  was 
promised  to  North  Carolina,  South  Carolina,  Georgia, 
Florida,  and  Alabama,  whenever  they  should  ratify 
the  amendment,  a  condition  which  all  fulfilled  in  the 
course  of  a  month.  In  each  of  these  cases,  however, 
it  was  stipulated  as  a  fundamental  condition  that 
the  constitution  of  the  State  should  never  be  so 
changed  as  "to  deprive  any  citizen  or  class  of  citi- 
zens of  the  United  States  of  the  right  to  vote  who 
are  entitled  to  vote  by  the  constitution  herein  recog- 
nized." This  was  a  foreshadowing  of  the  Fifteenth 
Amendment,  but  it  was  also  an  interference  with 
the  right  of  a  State,  unquestioned  hitherto,  to  give 
the  suffrage  on  terms  of  its  own  making.  Even  in 
the  North  the  negro  did  not  have  at  this  time,  in 
all  the  States,  the  full  franchise,  and  there  was  no 
demand  for  its  extension.  Johnson  wrote  able  vetoes 
of  both  bills,  but  Congress  trod  them  under  foot. 
Virginia,  Mississippi,  and  Texas  continued  to  be  gov- 
erned under  martial  law.  On  July  28th  a  procla- 
mation by  Secretary  of  State  Seward  declared  the 
Fourteenth  Amendment  in  force. 

The  Presidential  election  of  1868  promised  a  sharp 
struggle.  The  Republicans  were  bound  to  stand  by 
their  reconstruction  policy  and  negro  suffrage.  They 
were  also  pledged  to  the  prompt  payment  of  the 
national  debt  and  the  abolition  of  unnecessary  taxes. 
The  continued  premium  on  gold  and  the  high  price 

560 


RECONSTRUCTION 

of  United  States  bonds x  whose  interest  was  payable 
in  gold,  had  called  out  various  proposals  for  payment 
of  the  bonds  which  would  "  lighten  the  burden  of  the 
tax-payer  at  the  cost  of  a  virtual  breach  of  faith  on 
the  part  of  the  government."  A  proposition  to  pay 
the  bonds  in  " greenbacks"  found  favor  with  many 
Democrats  in  the  West,  but  the  party  as  a  whole  was 
weakened  by  its  war  record  and  the  unpopularity  of 
President  Johnson,  and  by  the  establishment  of  Re- 
publican control  in  the  South  through  the  Reconstruc- 
tion acts. 

On  May  20th,  four  days  after  the  first  vote  of  the 
Senate  on  the  impeachment  charges,  the  Republican 
convention  met  at  Chicago.  There  was  general 
agreement  upon  General  Grant  as  the  candidate 
for  President,  not  because  he  was  a  Republican,  but 
because  of  his  brilliant  military  record,  the  prom- 
inent part  he  had  been  forced  to  take  in  the  contro- 
versy between  President  Johnson  and  Congress,  and 
popular  confidence  in  his  ability  and  integrity.  The 
Republicans  have  always  made  much  of  soldier  can- 
didates, and  they  now  had  a  strong  one.  Amid 
great  enthusiasm,  the  entire  vote  of  the  convention 
was  given  for  Grant  on  the  first  ballot.  The  nomi- 
nee for  Vice-president  was  Schuyler  Colfax,  of  Indiana, 
Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives.  The  plat- 
form endorsed  the  Reconstruction  acts,  denounced 
repudiation  as  a  "  national  crime,"  scored  Johnson  in 
unmeasured  terms,  and  commended  the  "  spirit  of 
magnanimity  and  forbearance"  with  which  Confed- 
erates "  are  received  back  into  the  communion  of  the 
loyal  people."  On  the  crucial  question  of  negro  suf- 
frage, however,  the  platform  was  evasive,  the  asser- 
tion that  the  "guarantee  by  Congress  of  equal  suf- 

561 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

frage  to  all  loyal  men  at  the  South  was  demanded 
by  every  consideration  of  public  safety,  of  gratitude, 
and  of  justice,  and  must  be  maintained,"  being  quali- 
fied by  the  statement  that  "the  question  of  suffrage 
in  all  the  loyal  States  properly  belongs  to  the  people 
of  those  States."  It  was  difficult  to  see  that  negro 
suffrage  in  States  in  which  there  were  few  negroes, 
as  was  the  case  in  the  majority  of  the  States  of  the 
Union,  was  a  question  of  great  moment. 

The  Democratic  convention  at  New  York   framed 
a  platform  which  denounced  the  reconstruction  policy 
of  Congress,  favored  the  payment  of  the  public  debt 
in  "the  lawful  money  of  the  United  States  "  where 
payment  in  coin  was  not  in  terms  required,  and  de- 
manded a  long  list  of  reforms.     There  was'a  strong 
following  for  George  H.  Pendleton,  of  Ohio,  a  leading 
"peace  Democrat"  in  1864,  and  now  a  "greenback" 
champion,  but  on   the   twenty-second  ballot  there 
was  a  "stampede"  for  Horatio  Seymour,  of  New 
York,  and   he   was    unanimously  nominated.     The 
candidate  for  Vice-president  was  General  Francis  P 
Blair,  Jr.,  of  Missouri.     The  electoral  vote  was  214 
tor  Grant  and  80  for  Seymour,  Grant's  majority  of 
the   popular  vote   being   about   three  hundred  and 
nine  thousand.     An  inspection  of  the  returns,  how- 
ever, showed  that  it  was  to  the  reconstructed  States 
ol    the    South,   from    which    the    Democratic    vote 
had  been  largely  eliminated,  and  the  excluded  States 
ol    Virginia,    Mississippi,    and   Texas,    which    would 
nave  gone  Democratic  had  they  been  allowed  to  vote, 
that  the  Republicans  principally  owed  their  success, 
rather  than  to  any  marked  popular  endorsement  by 
the  Republican  States  which  had  a  free  ballot  and  a 
lair  count. 

562 


RECONSTRUCTION 

It  is  pleasant  to  turn  from  Johnson's  disastrous 
experience  in  domestic  affairs  to  two  successes  in  the 
field  of  diplomacy.  Early  in  the  Civil  War  the  Em- 
peror of  the  French,  Napoleon  III.,  hopeful  of  regain- 
ing in  America  the  prestige  which  he  was  rapidly 
losing  in  Europe,  sought  to  establish  in  Mexico,  just 
then  in  revolution,  a  kingdom  for  the  Archduke  Maxi- 
milian of  Austria.  While  the  war  lasted,  the  pro- 
test of  the  United  States  against  this  interference 
with  the  affairs  of  an  American  state  was  not  enforced, 
but  on  the  conclusion  of  the  war  a  significant  move- 
ment of  troops  towards  the  Mexican  border  was  fol- 
lowed by  the  withdrawal  of  the  French.  Maximilian 
chivalrously  elected  to  remain,  but  was  captured, 
tried,  and  shot.  Less  spectacular,  but  equally  suc- 
cessful, was  the  negotiation  with  Russia  which  re- 
sulted in  the  purchase  of  Alaska.  The  visible  friend- 
liness of  Russia  for  the  United  States  during  the  war 
bred  a  kindly  feeling  towards  that  country,  and  the 
acquisition  of  Alaska  was  generally  approved,  though 
not  without  criticism  of  the  price,  $7,200,000,  as  too 
high.  Seward,  the  Secretary  of  State,  could  con- 
gratulate himself  on  having  done  Russia  a  good  turn 
at  the  same  time  that  he  had  rid  the  United  States 
of  a  European  neighbor. 

There  was  no  difficulty  in  interpreting  the  vote  in 
November,  1868,  as  an  endorsement  of  the  Repub- 
lican policy,  *  and  the  work  of  reconstruction  was 
pushed  with  renewed  vigor.  It  would  be  tedious  to 
follow  in  detail  the  steps  in  the  process  where  no  new 
principle  was  at  issue.  In  April,  1869,  President 
Grant  was  authorized  to  submit  to  popular  vote  the 
new  constitutions  of  Virginia,  Mississippi,  and  Texas, 
and  by  the  end  of  March,  1870,  the  restoration  of  those 

563 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

States  was  complete.  The  case  of  Georgia,  to  which 
representation  in  Congress  had  been  again  denied, 
was  more  complicated,  but  on  July  15, 1870,  that  State 
also  was  admitted,  and  the  Union  was  once  more  per- 
fect. In  each  of  these  States  the  ratification  of  the 
Fifteenth  Amendment  to  the  Constitution,  forbidding 
the  denial  or  abridgment  by  the  United  States  or  by 
any  State  of  the  right  of  citizens  of  the  United  States 
to  vote  on  account  of  race,  color,  or  previous  condi- 
tion of  servitude,  had  been  made  a  prerequisite  to 
restoration.  The  Fifteenth  Amendment  did  not,  of 
course,  actually  confer  the  suffrage  upon  any  one,  but 
it  completed  the  process  which  the  Fourteenth  Amend- 
ment had  begun,  and  was,  in  fact,  made  necessary  by 
the  failure  of  the  franchise  section  of  the  latter  amend- 
ment to  secure  for  the  negro  the  political  rights  which 
the  Republican  party  was  determined  he  should 
have. 

The  South  and  the  Constitution  had  now  alike 
been  reconstructed.  Would  the  new  Constitution 
prove  sufficient  to  keep  the  South  in  the  appointed 
path? 

The  condition  of  the  South  during  the  four  years 
of  Grant's  first  administration  was  historically  unique. 
No  sooner  were  the  reconstructed  State  governments 
established,  with  the  army  of  the  United  States  at 
hand  for  their  protection  and  support,  than  they  be- 
gan a  policy  which  amounted  to  a  systematic  looting 
of  the  States.  Bonded  debts,  amounting  in  a  few 
years  to  nearly  $300,000,000  for  the  whole  South, 
were  piled  up  with  reckless  disregard  of  taxable 
wealth  or  future  ability  to  pay.  Georgia,  with  but 
$125,000,000  of  property  on  which  to  levy,  shortly  had 
a  debt  of  one-fifth  of  that  sum.     The  country  had  not 

564 


RECONSTRUCTION 

recovered  from  the  effects  of  bad  crops  in  1866  and 
1867,  and  general  economic  reorganization  was  slow. 
The  ignorant  freedmen  and  poor  whites,  led  in  most 
instances  by  unscrupulous  "carpet-baggers"  and 
"scalawags,"  voted  enormous  sums  for  refurnishing 
legislative  chambers  and  public  ofhces,  for  free  res- 
taurants, bars,  and  carriages,  and  for  public  printing. 
Valuable  franchises  were  given  away  or  sold  for  a 
song,  and  became  a  fertile  source  of  corruption.  No 
such  travesty  of  government  or  blatant  debauchery 
of  official  life  had  ever  been  known  in  America,  and 
the  army  officers  were  powerless  to  check  or  prevent 
it.  The  situation  was  at  its  worst  in  those  States  in 
which  the  negro  population  was  the  largest.  Yet  the 
refusal  in  many  cases  of  the  better  class  of  whites  to 
take  part  in  elections,  even  when  permitted  by  law  to 
do  so,  was  in  part  responsible  for  the  dreadful  con- 
ditions which  obtained,  while  factional  disputes  and 
personal  rivalries  long  prevented  joint  action  by  those 
who  were  alone,  at  the  moment,  fit  to  rule.  Not  un- 
til 1874  had  the  whites  of  the  South  sufficiently  com- 
bined for  self-defence  to  begin  to  overthrow  the  "  car- 
pet-bag" governments  and  recover  control.  To  aid 
in  this  work,  the  secret  society  known  as  the  Ku  Klux 
Klan,  organized  about  1866,  was  formed  to  terrorize 
negroes  and  their  white  sympathizers.  "Its  mem- 
bers whipped,  plundered,  burned,  abducted,  im- 
prisoned, tortured,  and  murdered,  for  the  prime  pur- 
pose of  keeping  the  negroes  from  exercising  suffrage 
and  holding  office.  They  were  protected  by  many 
respectable  people  who  would  not  have  participated 
personally  in  their  nefarious  work.  And  they  had 
confederates  everywhere  who,  upon  the  witness-stand 
and  in  the  jury-box,  would  perjure  themselves  to  pre- 

565 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

vent  their  conviction  and  punishment."  1  It  was  the 
natural,  but  utterly  lawless,  protest  of  a  people  against 
conditions  which  may  well  have  seemed  intolerable. 

Congress  thought  of  no  remedy  save  further  coer- 
cion. In  May,  1870,  it  passed  a  stringent  act  to  en- 
force the  Fifteenth  Amendment,  with  severe  penal- 
ties for  those  who  should  in  any  manner  hinder  or 
interfere  with  the  exercise  of  the  suffrage  by  any  one 
qualified  to  vote.  Persons  banding  together,  or  go- 
ing in  disguise  upon  a  publ  c  highway,  or  the  premises 
of  another,  with  intent  to  violate  the  act,  were  ren- 
dered liable  to  a  fine  of  five  thousand  dollars  or  im- 
prisonment for  ten  years,  or  both,  and  in  addition 
were  to  be  disqualified  from  holding  any  office  under 
the  United  States.  This  act  proving  insufficient,  it 
was  supplemented  by  another  in  February,  187 1, 
providing  for  the  appointment,  whenever  requested 
by  two  citizens,  of  supervisors  of  federal  elections  in 
any  city  or  town  of  more  than  twenty  thousand  in- 
habitants. There  could  be  no  question  of  the  right 
of  Congress  to  regulate  the  election  of  its  own  mem- 
bers; but  since,  in  order  to  avoid  the  inconvenience 
and  expense  of  frequent  elections,  State  and  Con- 
gressional officials  were  commonly  chosen  at  the  same 
time,  the  supervision  provided  by  this  statute  of 
187 1  would  in  practice  affect  much  more  than  the 
choice  of  members  of  Congress.  In  June,  1872,  the 
scope  of  the  act  was  further  widened.  In  April,  1 8 7 1 , 
came  an  act  to  enforce  the  Fourteenth  Amendment, 
commonly  called  the  uKu  Klux  act."  This  act 
aimed  especially  to  prevent  and  punish  the  work  of 
such  organizations  as  the  Ku  Klux  Klan,  and  to  pre- 

1  Burgess,  Reconstruction  and  the  Constitution,  251. 
566 


RECONSTRUCTION 

vent  the  intimidation  of  judges,  jurors,  and  other  pub- 
lic officials.  Wherever  the  execution  of  law  was  in- 
terrupted by  violence  or  any  unlawful  combination, 
the  President  was  authorized  to  proclaim  martial  law 
and  employ  the  army  and  navy  to  restore  order. 

With  the  passage  of  these  great  acts,  the  legislative 
history  of  reconstruction,  so  far  as  it  relates  to  the  po- 
litical reorganization  of  the  South  and  the  establish- 
ment of  negro  suffrage,  comes  practically  to  an  end. 
Every  State  which,  ten  years  before,  had  joined  the 
movement  for  secession  had  been  compelled  to  bow 
in  complete  submission  to  the  will  of  Congress,  and 
had  been  restored  to  the  Union  only  upon  the  accept- 
ance of  rigorous  terms  from  whose  binding  obligation 
there  seemed  to  be  no  escape  save  through  deliberate 
bad  faith.  So  far  as  law  and  military  power  could  go, 
the  political  rights  of  the  negroes  had  been  placed  on 
a  footing  of  perfect  equality  with  those  of  the  whites. 
Negroes  sat  in  both  Houses  of  Congress.  The  seat 
formerly  occupied  by  Jefferson  Davis  was  held  by  a 
black  man.  Republican  legislation  had  made  a  clean 
sweep  of  the  old  South  and  its  peculiar  institutions, 
and  called  the  result  justice  and  peace. 

The  failure  of  the  Republicans,  at  the  end  of  seven 
years  after  the  close  of  the  war,  to  restore  normal  con- 
ditions in  the  South,  or  even  to  maintain  government 
and  order  save  by  military  force,  gave  the  Democrats 
a  chance  to  taunt  them  with  incompetency.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  anarchical  excesses  of  negro  and  "  car- 
pet-bag" domination  bred  wide  -  spread  disaffection 
even  within  the  Republican  ranks.  There  were  other 
grounds  of  disaffection  also.  Grant  was  not  a  great 
statesman,  nor  had  he  the  acuteness  and  foresight  of 
the  experienced  politician.     Very  early  in  his  term 

567 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

he  had  shaken  off  the  principal  restrictions  of  the 
Tenure  of  Office  act,  but  in  his  administration  of  the 
federal  patronage  he  played  directly  into  the  hands 
of  "  bosses, ' '  whose  power  he  helped  greatly  to  develop. 
A  board  of  civil  service  commissioners  to  examine  ap- 
plicants for  minor  offices  was  in  existence  from  1872 
to  1875,  and  had  the  support  of  the  President,  but 
Congress  was  hostile,  and  the  appropriation  for  its 
support  was  discontinued.     Grant  had  also  suffered  a 
prolonged  attack  of  the  "  expansion  "  fever,  and  had 
done  his  best  to  bring  about  the  annexation  of  the 
island  of  Dominica,  or  San  Domingo.     A  treaty  of 
annexation  was  concluded  in  November,  1869,  and  in 
the  early  part  of  187 1  three  commissioners  were  sent 
to  report  on  conditions  in  the  island;  but  the  sharp 
division  of  public  opinion  in  the  United  States  com- 
pelled a  reluctant  abandonment  of  the  project.     Bet- 
ter success  attended  the  prosecution  of  claims  against 
Great   Britain  on  account  of  injuries  to  American 
commerce  inflicted  by  Confederate  armed  vessels  fitted 
out  m  English  ports.     The  great  Treaty  of  Wash- 
ington, in  1871,  referred  these  claims  to  arbitration, 
and  laid  down  for   the  government  of  the  tribunal 
some  stringent  rules  regarding  the  duties  of  neutrals. 
The  tribunal,  sitting  at  Geneva,  awarded  the  United 
btates  $15,500,000  m  satisfaction  of  its  claims. 

Ihe  financial  controversy  was  also  growing.  In 
March,  i860,  Congress  had  again  declared  its  purpose 
to  pay  all  the  debt  of  the  United  States  in  coin,  save 
where  payment  in  some  other  lawful  money  than 
gold  and  silver  had  been  authorized  when  the  debt 
was  contracted,  and  to  resume  specie  payment  "at 

wT     ,1  PmCtlCable  Peri°d-"     Jt  should  ^  remem- 
bered m  this  connection  that  a  large  part  of  the  bonds 

568 


RECONSTRUCTION 

issued  did  not  specify  the  kind  of  money  in  which  the 
bonds  were  to  be  paid.  The  volume  of  national  bank- 
notes was  increased,  and  some  inequalities  in  its  dis- 
tribution among  the  States  removed,  and  a  com- 
prehensive plan  for  refunding  the  national  debt  was 
adopted.  To  those  who  had  embraced  the  "green- 
back "  heresy  these  financial  measures  were,  of  course, 
highly  unsatisfactory;  and  the  attitude  of  the  Su- 
preme Court,  which,  having  decided  in  1869  that  the 
action  of  Congress  in  making  the  "greenbacks  "  legal 
tender  was  unconstitutional,  in  1870,  with  a  reor- 
ganized membership,  reversed  its  decision  and  held 
the  legal  -  tender  provision  constitutional,  roused 
rather  than  allayed  discontent. 

The  strongest  dissolvent  within  the  Republican 
party,  however,  was  the  growing  volume  of  reports 
of  outrage  and  misgovernment  in  the  South.  Promi- 
nent Republicans  like  Horace  Greeley,  editor  of  the 
New  York  Tribune,  the  leading  Republican  news- 
paper in  the  country,  Charles  Francis  Adams,  and 
Carl  Schurz,  protested  against  a  policy  which  brought 
only  anarchy  and  political  corruption;  and  Sumner, 
who  had  been  deprived  of  the  chairmanship  of  the 
Senate  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations  because  of 
his  opposition  to  the  San  Domingo  project,  approved 
the  protest.  On  May  1,  1872,  a  convention  of  Liberal 
Republicans,  as  those  who  felt  compelled  to  act  out- 
side the  regular  Republican  organization  were  called, 
met  at  Cincinnati.  The  platform  denounced  Grant's 
administration  as  "guilty  of  wanton  disregard  of  the 
laws  of  the  land,"  demanded  a  reform  of  the  civil  ser- 
vice, pledged  the  party  to  the  maintenance  of  the 
Union  and  of  "emancipation  and  enfranchisement,' ' 
called  for  the  restoration  of  State  and  local  self- 
37  S69 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

government  without  military  support,  denounced  re- 
pudiation, and  championed  the  early  resumption  of 
specie  payment.  The  platform  was  strong,  but  it 
was  weakened  badly  by  the  nomination  of  the  able, 
erratic  Greeley  for  President.  The  disappointment 
of  those  who  had  hoped  for  a  stronger  candidate  was 
drowned  by  the  cry  of  "Anybody  to  beat  Grant." 
The  Republicans,  confident  of  success,  renominated 
Grant  on  a  platform  which  endorsed,  both  as  a  whole 
and  in  detail,  the  Republican  policy  of  Congress  and 
President.  The  demand  for  civil  service  reform  was 
acquiesced  in  so  far  as  was  possible  "without  prac- 
tically creating  a  life -tenure  of  office"  —  a  saving 
clause  whose  principle  was  to  be  many  times  pro- 
claimed in  subsequent  years.  The  Democrats,  di- 
vided in  opinion  and  following,  but  hopeful  of  cover- 
ing their  war  record  by  the  success  of  "greenback- 
ism,"  nominated  Greeley  on  the  Cincinnati  platform; 
but  their  support  of  Greeley  was  at  best  half-hearted, 
while  frank  dissatisfaction  was  openly  expressed  by 
many.  Under  the  circumstances,  the  success  of  the 
Republicans  was  assured.  Grant  received  286  elec- 
toral votes  against  63  for  the  combined  opposition. 
Greeley  died — partly,  it  was  said,  of  disappointment 
—a  few  days  after  the  election,  and  the  Democratic 
electoral  votes  were  scattered,  the  larger  number 
being  cast  for  Thomas  A.  Hendricks,  of  Indiana. 
Three  votes  of  Georgia  given  for  Greeley  were  re- 
jected by  Congress.  Louisiana,  thanks  to  two  re- 
turning boards  and  two  sets  of  returns,  lost  its  vote 
altogether. 

The  success  of  the  Republicans  was  due  far  more 
to  dissensions  among  the  Democrats  and  the  unwill- 
ingness of  the  North  to  trust  the  administration  of 

57o 


RECONSTRUCTION 

affairs  to  Democratic  hands  than  to  any  wide-spread 
approval  of  the  Republican  programme.  During  the 
next  two  years,  as  one  southern  State  after  another 
freed  itself  from  negro  and  "carpet -bag"  control, 
the  conviction  deepened  that  the  Republican  leaders 
were  too  radical,  so  far  as  reconstruction  was  con- 
cerned, to  represent  the  better  opinion  of  the  party, 
and  that  a  change  was  advisable.  In  various  ways 
the  administration  had  been  discredited.  The  years 
from  1869  to  1872  were,  in  general,  years  of  pros- 
perity. Harvests  were  good,  trade  flourished,  rail- 
roads multiplied,  and  a  steady  stream  of  immigration 
poured  into  the  country  from  Europe.  The  popula- 
tion of  38,500,000  in  1870  showed  an  increase  of 
seven  millions  since  i860.  But  the  tide  turned.  A 
disastrous  commercial  crisis,  brought  on  by  specula- 
tion and  excessive  railroad  building,  began  in  1873, 
and  its  effects  continued  some  five  years.  There  were 
ugly  revelations  of  corruption  in  the  civil  service  at 
Washington  and  elsewhere,  indicating  the  reign  of  the 
spoilsman.  The  "whiskey  ring  in  the  West  show- 
ed a  formidable  conspiracy  to  defraud  the  govern- 
ment of  revenue  from  internal  taxation.  There  were 
extensive  frauds  in  the  Indian  service,  and  disastrous 
Indian  wars  in  consequence.  Grant  was  still,  in  the 
popular  mind,  the  honest  soldier,  but  public  patience 
with  the  politicians  who  controlled  him  was  fast 
reaching  an  end.  The  State  and  Congressional  elec- 
tions of  1874  were  an  emphatic  rebuke  to  the  party  in 
power.  In  the  Forty-third  Congress,  which  met  in 
December,  1873,  the  Republicans  had  a  majority  in 
both  Houses,  and  in  the  House  of  Representatives  had 
198  of  the  291  members.  In  the  Forty-fourth  Con- 
gress there  was  a  diminished  Republican  majority  in 

S7i 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  Senate,  while  of  the  290  members  of  the  House, 
182  were  Democrats. 

There  was  much  important  financial  legislation, 
however,  during  Grant's  second  term.  In  1873  the 
coinage  laws  were  revised  and  the  standard  silver 
dollar  of  41 2  J  grains  omitted  from  the  list  of  coins— 
a  change  which  led  later  to  the  popular  charge  that 
the  act  aimed  to  "demonetize"  silver,  and  caused 
the  act  to  be  branded,  by  silver  partisans,  as  the 
"  crime  of  1873."  The  limitation  on  the  circulation 
of  national  banks  was  removed,  and  the  bank-note 
issue  allowed  to  adjust  itself  more  readily  to  the 
business  needs  of  the  country.  The  trade  dollar  lost 
its  legal-tender  character,  and  presently  ceased  to  be 
coined.  Congress  did,  indeed,  coquette  with  the  de- 
mand for  inflation,  and  in  1874  passed  a  bill  increas- 
ing the  volume  of  "greenbacks,"  but  Grant  was  wise 
enough  to  veto  the  bill.  In  1875  provision  was  made 
for  the  resumption  of  specie  payment  on  January  1, 
1879,  and  for  the  retirement  of  the  greenbacks  untii 
their  amount  was  reduced  to  $300,000,000.  Tariff 
duties  were  somewhat  reduced  in  1870,  and  again  in 
1872.  The  internal  revenue  duties  had  been  already 
several  times  adjusted. 

The  demand  for  further  protection  of  the  civil 
rights  of  the  negro  culminated  in  the  passage,  March 
1,  1875,  of  an  act  decreeing  to  all  persons  in  the  United 
States  "the  full  and  equal  enjoyment  of  the  accom- 
modations, advantages,  facilities,  and  privileges  of 
inns,  public  conveyances  on  land  or  water,  theatres, 
and  other  places  of  public  amusement";  but  no 
particular  attempt  to  enforce  the  act  was  ever 
made,  and  equal  privileges  have  continued  to  be, 
in  many  places,   denied.     Sumner,   the  framer  and 

572 


RECONSTRUCTION 

advocate  of  the  measure,  had  died  a  year  before  its 
passage. 

All  signs  pointed  to  a  far  more  bitter  and  more 
evenly  balanced  struggle  for  party  supremacy  in  the 
Presidential  election  of  1876  than  had  been  the  case 
since  the  war.     Many  Democrats  who  had  hitherto 
acted  with  the  Republicans,  because  they  believed 
the  war,  and  the  political  issues  growing  out  of  it,  to 
be  of  paramount  importance,  had  begun  to  return 
to  their  former  party  allegiance,  and  could  not  longer 
be   counted   upon   to   vote   the    Republican   ticket. 
Many  voters,  especially  those  on  whom  party  obliga- 
tions of  any  sort  bore  lightly,  felt  that  the  Republican 
party  had  outlived  its  usefulness,  and  pointed  to  its 
vacillating  and  unsatisfactory  treatment  of  the  cur- 
rency problem  as  conclusive  proof.     The  painful  reve- 
lations of  corruption  in  the  public  service  alienated 
many.     The  appearance  in  Congress  of  an  increasing 
number  of  propositions  to  amend  the  Constitution 
so  as  to  provide  for  the  choice  of  President  and  Vice- 
president  by  popular  vote,  was  an  interesting  indica- 
tion of  Democratic  change,  testifying  particularly  to 
the  growing  power  of  the  West.     Men  were  weary  of 
reading  and  hearing  about  uthe  South,"   "  carpet- 
baggers," reconstruction,  and  the  rights  of  the  negro. 
It  offended  them  that  their  orators  should  persist  in 
''waving  the  bloody  shirt."     Grave  social,  commer- 
cial,  industrial,   and  financial  problems  confronted 
the  country,  and  there  was  a  demand  for  a  party 
that  would  deal  with  the  present  and  leave  the  dead 
to  bury  their  dead. 

It  was  understood  that  Grant  was  not  unwilling  to 
depart  from  the  precedent  established  by  Washington, 
Jefferson,  Madison,  Monroe,  and  Jackson,  and  to  of- 

573 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

fer  himself  as  a  candidate  for  a  third  term;  but  the 
nearly  unanimous  adoption  by  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives of  a  resolution  declaring  that  a  third  term 
"would  be  unwise,  unpatriotic,  and  fraught  with 
peril  to  our  free  institutions,"  put  an  end  to  the  proj- 
ect for  the  time  being.  There  was  wide  popular  fol- 
lowing for  James  G.  Blaine,  of  Maine,  the  leading  Re- 
publican of  the  House,  and  for  six  years  its  Speaker ; 
but  his  statesmanship  was  not  of  the  highest  or  purest 
order,  his  attitude  towards  the  South  was  hostile 
rather  than  conciliatory,  and  there  were  charges  of 
misconduct  which  told  heavily  against  him.  The 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  Benjamin  H.  Bristow, 
prominent  for  his  vigorous  prosecution  of  the  "  whis- 
key ring"  frauds,  had  a  strong  following.  Of  the 
Democratic  leaders,  Samuel  J.  Tilden,  Governor  of 
New  York,  was  far  the  ablest  and  the  most  promi- 
nent. Next  to  the  question  of  the  policy  to  be  pursued 
towards  the  South,  the  most  important  question  be- 
fore the  country  was  that  of  the  resumption  of  specie 
payment.  The  Greenback,  or  Independent  National, 
party  demanded  the  "immediate  and  unconditional 
repeal"  of  the  Resumption  act  and  the  establishment 
of  a  paper  currency.  The  Republican  platform, 
fearing  to  endorse  the  Resumption  act  directly,  lest 
votes  should  thereby  be  lost,  demanded  "a  continu- 
ous and  steady  progress  to  specie  payment."  The 
Democratic  platform  denounced  everything  that  the 
Republicans  had  done,  including  the  Resumption  act, 
and  demanded  thoroughgoing  reform,  but  on  the 
currency  issue  offered  no  definite  proposals.  The 
Republicans  nominated  Rutherford  B.  Hayes,  of 
Ohio,  an  able,  conservative,  high-minded  man  of 
solid  rather  than  distinguished  ability,  and  William 

574 


RECONSTRUCTION 

A.  Wheeler,  of  New  York.     The  Democrats  nominated 
Tilden. 

The  campaign  was  without  distinctive  features. 
The  result  of  the  election,  however,  showed  an  extraor- 
dinary and  unprecedented  situation.  From  each  of 
the  four  States  of  South  Carolina,  Florida,  Louisiana, 
and  Oregon  there  were  two  sets  of  returns.  In  Oregon 
the  eligibility  of  a  Republican  elector  was  in  dispute. 
In  South  Carolina  and  Florida  there  were  charges  of 
fraud  and  intimidation,  while  in  Louisiana  there  were 
two  rival  governments.  If  the  Republicans  could 
secure  the  entire  electoral  vote  of  all  four  States,  they 
would  elect  their  candidate  by  a  majority  of  one,  but 
the  loss  of  a  single  vote  would  give  the  election  to  the 
Democrats.  The  Republicans  immediately  deter- 
mined to  "  claim  everything."  The  popular  excite- 
ment was  intense.  The  publication,  in  1878,  of  cer- 
tain "cipher  despatches"  led  to  the  charge  that  the 
Democrats  had  sought  for  a  Republican  elector  who 
could  be  bribed.  There  was  even  heated  talk  of 
seating  the  Democratic  candidate  by  force — a  step 
which  President  Grant  quietly  took  measures  to  pre- 
vent. 

On  January  29,  1877,  an  act  of  Congress  pro- 
vided for  counting  the  electoral  vote.  After  regu- 
lating the  procedure  of  the  two  Houses,  the  act 
created  an  electoral  commission  composed  of  five 
Senators,  five  Representatives,  and  five  justices  of 
the  Supreme  Court,  to  whom  all  questions  regarding 
disputed  returns  should  be  referred.,  and  whose  de- 
cision should  be  final  unless  botrT  Houses  agreed  in 
setting  it  aside.  The  ten  members  of  Congress  chosen 
were,  of  course,  evenly  divided  between  the  two  par- 
ties, while  of  the  four  justices  specified  in  the  act,  two 

575 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

were  Republicans  and  two  Democrats.  The  respon- 
sibility of  final  decision  would  rest,  therefore,  upon 
the  fifth  justice,  who  was  to  be  chosen  by  the  other 
four.  It  was  supposed,  while  the  bill  was  under  dis- 
cussion, that  the  choice  would  fall  upon  Justice  David 
Davis,  in  whose  ability  and  impartiality  there  was  gen- 
eral confidence.  Just  before  the  passage  of  the  act, 
however,  Davis  was  chosen  United  States  Senator 
from  Illinois.  The  remaining  justices  available  were 
Republicans,  and  the  choice  fell  upon  Justice  Joseph 
P.  Bradley.  The  decisions  of  the  commission  sus- 
tained the  Republican  contentions,  and  as  the  Re- 
publican Senate  and  Democratic  House  took  opposite 
views  in  each  case,  the  decisions  were  not  reversed. 
Hayes  and  Wheeler  were  accordingly  declared  elected. 
The  Democrats,  of  course,  charged  their  opponents 
with  partisanship  and  fraud,  and  many  refused  to 
admit  the  legality  of  the  result,  but  the  decision  was 
generally  acquiesced  in  by  the  country. 

The  majority  of  Republicans  had  been  agreed  in 
desiring  a  candidate  who,  if  elected,  would  put  an 
end  to  the  Grant  regime  in  the  South.  They  found 
such  a  leader  in  President  Hayes.  Grant  had  al- 
ready begun  the  withdrawal  of  the  federal  troops 
from  the  South.  Hayes  shortly  withdrew  the  re- 
mainder, and  left  the  southern  States  to  manage 
their  political  affairs  without  interference.  The  Re- 
publican ^  governments  in  South  Carolina,  Florida, 
and  Louisiana,  which  had  been  maintained  only  by 
military  force,  speedily  fell,  and  Democratic  admin- 
istrations took  their  place.  There  was  once  more  a 
"solid  South."  The  course  of  the  President  was 
severely  criticised  by  the  radicals,  who  still  believed 
in  blood  and  iron,  but  there  are  few  who  now  doubt 

576 


RECONSTRUCTION 

that  it  was  as  wise  as  it  was  patriotic.  For  the  continu- 
ance of  military  rule  in  any  part  of  the  country  in 
time  of  peace  there  can  be,  under  our  system  of  gov- 
ernment, no  justification,  and  least  of  all  where  the 
purpose  is  only  to  uphold  a  particular  administration 
or  party.  Vital,  too,  as  was  the  ballot  to  the  uplifting 
of  the  negro  race,  it  was  better  that  the  negro  should 
be  compelled  to  achieve  political  influence  through 
education,  industry,  and  a  moral  life  than  that  he 
should  be  permanently  sustained  in  a  position  of  un- 
healthy and  adventitious  importance  by  federal  aid. 
Military  government  in  a  democracy,  in  time  of 
peace,  is  not  only  an  intolerable  anomaly,  but  a  dan- 
gerous impediment  also  to  the  individual  liberty 
upon  whose  free  exercise  the  welfare  of  the  community 
depends.  It  was  the  cardinal  mistake  of  reconstruc- 
tion, not  that  it  enfranchised  the  negro  or  imposed 
conditions  on  the  readmission  of  the  States,  but  that 
it  systematically  bred  enmity  between  the  races  by 
discriminating  against  the  whites  at  the  same  time 
that  it  did  nothing  to  educate  the  negroes  whom  the 
national  power  had  freed.  It  is  to  the  lasting  credit 
of  President  Hayes  that  he  brought  the  dark  period 
of  coercion  and  restraint  to  an  end,  and  left  the  South 
to  adjust  the  question  of  political  control  for  itself, 
subject  only  to  the  Constitution,  the  law,  and  the 
obligations  of  a  Christian  civilization. 


XXIV 
THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

THE  administration  of  President  Hayes  marks  a 
transition  from  the  period  of  which  the  Civil  War 
and  its  resulting  reconstruction  of  the  South  were 
the  climax,  to  the  period  in  which  we  now  live.  His- 
torical periods  and  social  movements  can  never  be 
very  accurately  bounded  by  dates  or  particular 
events,  nor  is  there  ever  a  complete  doffing  of  the  old 
habit  and  donning  of  the  new.  Political  and  social 
conditions  which  have  lost  their  significance,  and  in- 
fluences which  have  spent  their  force,  often  continue 
to  be  talked  about  and  to  affect  public  thought  and 
action  after  their  real  vitality  has  been  dissipated, 
albeit  the  advent  of  a  new  time  is  more  or  less  clearly 
apprehended.  It  was  the  peculiar  distinction  of 
Hayes's  administration  that  it  stood  thus  between 
the  old  and  the  new,  between  a  closed  past  and  an 
opening  future.  The  great  issues  born  of  slavery, 
State  rights,  nullification,  secession,  and  reconstruc- 
tion were  dead,  save  as  narrow-minded  leaders,  for 
the  sake  of  making  political  "capital"  by  vicious  ap- 
peal to  partisan  prejudices,  chose  to  keep  alive  the 
memory  of  them.  Men  no  longer  discussed  the  nat- 
ure of  the  constitutional  compact  or  the  relative 
powers  of  the  nation  and  the  States.  Only  the  Su- 
preme Court,  with  the  lawyer's  desire  to  avoid  change 

578 


THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

and  make  things  hang  together,  busied  itself  with  de- 
vising interpretations  of  the  Constitution  which  would 
give  an  appearance  of  logical  consistency  to  the  acts 
of  the  federal  government  during  and  after  the  war. 
There  was  a  solid  South,  but  it  was  to  be  henceforth 
free  from  either  Congressional  or  Executive  interfer- 
ence. For  more  than  twenty  years  the  great  prob- 
lems of  the  country  were  to.  be,  not  political  or  sec- 
tional, but  financial,  industrial,  commercial,  social. 
The  nation  was  to  turn  to  new  tasks  of  internal  re- 
organization and  development,  demanding  primarily 
expert  knowledge  and  administrative  skill,  and  affect- 
ing intimately  the  daily  life  of  the  people.  Only  at  the 
end  was  the  United  States  to  fling  precedent  to  the 
winds,  and  enter  with  youthful  enthusiasm  upon  a 
fateful  career  of  territorial  expansion  and  imperial- 
istic conduct. 

There  had  been  some  striking  marks  of  national 
progress  in  the  past  ten  years.  The  census  of  1870 
showed  a  population  of  38,558,371,  a  gain  of  over 
seven  millions  since  i860.  The  gain  was,  of  course, 
less  than  it  would  have  been  but  for  the  Civil  War. 
Especially  significant  were  the  growth  of  the  city  pop- 
ulation, the  rapid  filling  up  of  the  West,  and  the  large 
though  fluctuating  volume  of  foreign  immigration. 
The  number  of  immigrants,  aggregating  427>833  in 
1854,  had  fallen  as  low  as  89,207  in  1862 ;  it  rose  un- 
steadily till  1873,  when  it  was  459,803,  and  then  de- 
clined till  1879,  when  it  reached  138,469.  Large  as 
were  these  numbers,  there  was  as  yet  no  difficulty  in 
providing  for  them,  or,  on  the  whole,  in  assimilating 
them,  though  before  long  there  was  to  be  questioning 
whether,  in  view  of  the  large  percentage  of  poor  and 
ignorant  arrivals,  the  power  of  assimilation  was  not 

579 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

being  overstrained.  The  Union  Pacific  Railway  was 
completed  in  May,  1869,  and  a  veritable  net-work  of 
railroad  lines  was  rapidly  covering  the  country.  The 
total  miles  built  from  1869  to  1873,  when  the  com- 
mercial panic  checked  construction,  was  about  twenty 
thousand.  The  successful  laying  of  an  Atlantic  cable 
gave  telegraphic  connection  with  Europe.  The  great 
Centennial  Exhibition  at  Philadelphia,  in  1876,  was  a 
marvellous  illustration  of  the  industrial  progress  of  the 
United  States,  and  for  the  first  time  afforded  oppor- 
tunity for  comparison  between  American  methods 
and  products  and  those  of  European  countries. 
American  invention  in  particular  received  a  powerful 
stimulus.  The  total  number  of  patents  issued  by 
the  United  States  patent -office  down  to  1870  was 
120,573;  the  number  issued  from  1871  to  1902  was 
606,904,  or  more  than  five  times  as  many  as  in  the 
preceding  eighty  years,  and  nearly  half  the  total 
number  issued  in  the  same  period  by  all  the  other 
countries  of  the  world. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  President  Hayes  took 
office,  the  country  was  still  suffering  from  the  indus- 
trial and  financial  depression  which  followed  the  great 
panic  of  1873.  The  causes  of  the  panic  were  to  be 
found  in  the  overproduction  of  manufactured  goods, 
particularly  iron,  consequent  upon  the  activity  in 
railroad  building;  the  disturbance  of  the  world's 
market  for  grain  due  to  the  opening  of  the  West 
and  increased  acreage  abroad;  the  demand  for 
specie  with  which  to  pay  the  foreign  debt,  and  the 
general  inflation  of  prices  and  credit.  The  passage 
by  Congress,  January,  1875,  of  the  act  for  the  re- 
sumption of  specie  payment,  did  not  greatly  aid  an 
early  return  to  sound  conditions,  for  a  change  in 

580 


THE    NEWEST   HISTORY 

business  methods  as  well  as  in  government  policy 
was  needed.  A  change  for  the  better,  however,  took 
place  by  1878,  when  the  balance  of  foreign  trade  once 
more  favored  the  United  States — that  is,  the  value 
of  exports  exceeded  the  value  of  imports.  With  this 
aid,  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  John  Sherman, 
was  able  to  carry  to  completion  his  policy  of  accumu- 
lating gold  by  the  sale  of  bonds,  and  on  January  1, 
1879,  specie  payment  was  quietly  resumed. 

The  financial  question  had  long  been  one  of  the 
most  serious  issues  before  the  country,  and  it  was  to 
go  through  various  phases  and  be  made  the  occasion 
of  prolonged  and  heated  discussion  before  even  an 
approximate  solution  was  reached.     On  the  funda- 
mental economic  question  involved  there  was  diver- 
sity of  opinion,  not  only  among  people  at  large,  but 
also  among  authorities.     With  regard  to  the  proper 
relative  volumes  of  gold  and  silver  there  was,  in  par- 
ticular, serious  divergence  of  view.     The  great  finan- 
cial and  business  interests  as  a  rule  urged  the  main- 
tenance of  the  gold  standard,  by  which  every  dollar 
of  currency  issued  under  the  authority  of  the  United 
States  was  to  be  kept  at  a  parity  with  gold.     Op- 
posed to  them  were  the  bimetallists,  who  insisted  that 
both  gold  and  silver  could  and  ought  to  be  used  as 
standards  of  value.     Those  who  advocated  the  gold 
standard  pointed  to  the  example  of  other  countries 
— gold  being  the  universal  standard  in  international 
exchange — and  ridiculed  the  idea  of  a"  double  stand- 
ard" as  a  contradiction  in  terms.     The  silver  ad- 
vocates, on  the  other  hand,  claimed  with  some  plausi- 
bility that  the  world's  annual  production  of  gold  was 
insufficient  to  meet  the  needs  of  business,  and  that 
in  consequence  there  was  taking  Dlace  a  decline  in 

581 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

the  volume  of  money  and  a  general  rise  of  prices;  and 
a  wide-spread  demand  arose  for  the  ''free  and  un- 
limited coinage  of  silver."  For  this  extreme  course 
there  was  not  sufficient  support,  but  in  February, 
1878 — less  than  a  year  before  specie  payment  was 
to  be  resumed — the  "Bland  act" — so-called  from  its 
chief  promoter,  Richard  P.  Bland,  of  Missouri,  a 
representative  in  Congress — directed  the  resumption 
of  the  coinage  of  the  standard  silver  dollar,  which  had 
been  dropped  from  the  list  of  coins  in  1873,  to  an 
amount  not  less  than  two  million  nor  more  than  four 
million  dollars  a  month.  President  Hayes  interposed 
his  veto,  but  large  majorities  in  each  House  passed 
the  bill  over  the  veto.  The  act  remained  in  force 
until  July  14,  1890,  by  which  time  378,166,000  silver 
dollars  had  been  coined.  There  was  also  much  popu- 
lar opposition  to  banks,  and  an  act  of  May  31,  1878, 
forbade  the  further  retirement  of  the  legal -tender 
notes,  whose  place  the  national  bank-notes  would  in 
part  take. 

It  was  the  great  misfortune  of  President  Hayes  to 
be,  for  the  larger  part  of  his  term,  without  the  support 
of  his  party  in  either  House  of  Congress.  This  was 
partly  due  to  his  attitude  towards  the  South,  which 
alienated  radical  Republicans  without  winning  the  ad- 
herence of  the  Democrats,  and  partly  to  his  lack  of 
skill  in  dealing  with  men ;  but  it  was  also  due  in  large 
measure  to  the  rise  of  financial  issues  in  regard  to 
which  neither  party,  and  especially  the  Republican 
party,  was  ready  to  take  a  definite  stand.  As  a  con- 
sequence, Hayes  was  interfered  with  as  few  Presi- 
dents^ have  been.  When  the  Forty-sixth  Congress 
met,  in  March,  1879,  there  was  a  Democratic  major- 
ity in  each  House.     With  the  object  of  reducing  the 

S82 


THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

power  of  the  Executive  to  control  federal  elections 
by  repealing  or  amending  the  existing  laws,  legislation 
for  the  purpose — known  as  ''riders" — was  attached 
to  several  of  the  great  appropriation  bills,  in  hope 
that  the  changes  would  be  accepted  rather  than  stop 
the  appropriations;  but  Hayes  boldly  vetoed  the 
bills,  and  the  " riders"  were  eventually  dropped.  In 
1880,  however,  the  use  of  the  army  at  the  polls  was 
forbidden.  To  the  suggested  necessity  of  civil  service 
reform  Congress  turned  a  deaf  ear,  and  no  provision 
was  made  to  regulate  the  electoral  count  so  as  to 
avoid  another  disputed  election.  As  a  consequence 
of  the  differences  between  the  executive  and  legis- 
lative departments,  Hayes's  term  was  not  fruitful  of 
great  issues  or  interesting  events,  but  it  was  rather  a 
time  in  which  great  issues  and  momentous  party 
changes  were  preparing. 

The  Republicans,  in  general  the  representatives 
of  property  interests  and  vested  rights,  were  slow 
in  adapting  themselves  to  new  conditions  and  in 
meeting  new  issues.  The  Democrats,  in  general  the 
party  of  reform  ideas,  suffered  from  divided  coun- 
sels and  showed  singular  incapacity  for  leadership. 
In  the  Presidential  contest  of  1880  nearly  half  of  the 
delegates  in  the  Republican  convention  championed 
the  candidacy  of  General  Grant,  but  on  the  thirty- 
sixth  ballot  the  nomination  was  given  to  James  A. 
Garfield,  of  Ohio,  on  a  platform  which  recounted 
the  achievements  of  the  party,  denounced  the  Demo- 
crats and  the  solid  South,  and  favored  protec- 
tion and  civil  service  reform.  The  currency  ques- 
tion was  not  mentioned.  Garfield  had  served  with 
distinction  in  the  Civil  War  and  had  attained  promi- 
nence in  Congress.     The  Democrats  nominated  Win- 

S83 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

field  S.  Hancock,  of  Pennsylvania,  the  chief  demands 
of  the  platform  being  for  a  return  to  historical  Demo- 
cratic principles,  "  honest  money,  consisting  of  gold 
and  silver,  and  paper  convertible  into  coin  on  de- 
mand," a  tariff  for  revenue  only,  civil  service  reform, 
and  "free  ships  and  a  living  chance  for  American 
commerce  on  the  seas  and  on  the  land."  The  Green- 
back party,  which  had  polled  over  a  million  votes  in 
the  State  elections  of  1878,  demanded  the  issue  of  all 
money  by  the  government  and  not  by  banks,  the  full 
legal-tender  quality  for  all  forms  of  money,  and  the 
unlimited  coinage  of  silver  as  well  as  of  gold ;  opposed 
the  refunding  of  the  debt ;  and  called  for  the  regula- 
tion of  interstate  commerce  and  for  numerous  laws 
for  the  benefit  of  the  laboring  classes.  The  Presi- 
dential candidate  of  the  party  was  James  B.  Weaver, 
of  Iowa.  All  three  platforms  urged  the  restriction 
of  Chinese  immigration,  which  on  the  Pacific  coast 
had  attained  such  proportions  as  to  interfere  with 
other  labor  interests.  A  Prohibition  party  also  held 
a  convention  and  nominated  candidates.  For  the 
first  time  in  many  years  "the  South"  was  not  an 
issue  in  the  election,  though  many  southern  Repub- 
licans did  not  vote.  The  popular  vote  showed  a  plu- 
rality of  less  than  ten  thousand  for  Garfield  in  a  com- 
bined Democratic  and  Republican  vote  of  8,899,368, 
and  a  Greenback  strength  of  only  308,578;  but  the 
electoral  vote  gave  the  election  to  the  Republicans. 

At  no  time  since  the  "era  of  good  feeling"  were 
party  lines  so  indistinct,  both  in  Congress  and  in  the 
country,  as  during  the  years  1881-85.  In  the 
transition  from  old  to  new  issues,  neither  party  for 
the  moment  actively  championed  distinctive  doc- 
trines.    The  legislation  of  Congress,  though  impor- 

S84 


THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

tant,  was  not  in  the  main  partisan.  The  situation, 
indeed,  afforded  ground  for  hope  that  a  much-needed 
reorganization  of  the  existing  parties,  or  else  the  rise 
of  a  new  party  with  a  modern  creed,  might  shortly 
come  about ;  but  the  ingrained  conservatism  of  Ameri- 
cans in  matters  of  political  form,  their  aversion  to 
new  names  and  "  third  parties,"  and  their  preference 
for  practical  adjustment  rather  than  theoretical 
soundness,  kept  the  two  historical  parties  in  the  field, 
and  divided  the  support  of  the  great  majority  of  the 
voters  between  them.  The  shooting  of  President 
Garfield,  in  July,  1881,  and  his  death  the  following 
September,  elevated  to  the  Presidential  chair  a  man 
whose  nomination  as  Vice-president  had  been  hailed 
by  many  as  conspicuously  unfit,  and  whose  candi- 
dacy had  induced  coldness  rather  than  enthusiasm. 
Chester  A.  Arthur  was  principally  known  to  the  coun- 
try as  a  New  York  politician  whom  Hayes  had  re- 
moved from  the  office  of  collector  of  the  port  of 
New  York.  The  circumstances  of  his  accession  to 
the  high  office  of  Chief  Magistrate  of  the  republic 
were  peculiarly  trying,  but  his  conscientious  and  dig- 
nified course  as  President  steadily  won  popular  re- 
spect and  commendation,  and  secured  for  him  a  high, 
if  not  a  distinguished,  place  in  the  list  of  Presidents. 

The  achievements  of  Congress  were  a  curious  mixt- 
ure of  large  and  small,  grave  and  gay.  The  Senate 
engaged  in  an  unseemly  partisan  wrangle  over  the 
appointments  of  Garfield,  in  the  course  of  which  the 
New  York  Senators,  Roscoe  Conkling  and  Thomas  C. 
Piatt,  suddenly  resigned.  Conkling  did  not  re-enter 
public  life.  The  trial  of  Guiteau,  the  President's  as- 
sassin, was  attended  with  disgraceful  incidents;  but 
the  fact  that  the  unfortunate  man  was  also  a  disap- 

*S  585 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

pointed  office-seeker  drew  attention  dramatically  to 
the  need  of  civil  service  reform,  and  on  January  16, 
1883,  a  bill  for  the  appointment  of  a  Civil  Service 
Commission  and  the  establishment  of  a  merit  system 
of  appointments  became  law.  President  Arthur  had 
strongly  recommended  the  measure,  and  during  his 
administration  the  law  was  faithfully  enforced. 
Stringent  laws  for  the  punishment  of  polygamy,  which 
among  the  Mormons,  in  Utah,  had  become  a  menace 
to  the  national  peace,  and  for  the  exclusion  of  Chinese 
immigrants  for  ten  years,  were  also  passed.  A  tariff 
commission  in  1883  recommended  a  reduction  of 
duties  in  view  of  the  large  surplus  revenue,  but  the 
resulting  tariff  act,  and  the  reduction  of  internal  taxes, 
proved  only  palliatives .  There  were  wide-spread  labor 
troubles,  with  the  rapid  formation  of  trusts,  on  the 
one  hand,  and  of  labor  organizations,  the  most  prom- 
inent of  them  the  Knights  of  Labor,  on  the  other. 
With  the  relations  between  capital  and  labor,  Con- 
gress has  as  yet  failed  to  deal  in  any  satisfactory  man- 
ner, and  the  strike,  the  lockout,  the  boycott,  and  the 
black-list  have  continued  to  be  resorted  to  by  both 
parties,  with  disastrous  consequences  for  the  prosper- 
ity of  industry  and  for  the  peace  of  the  community. 

The  failure  of  the  tariff  of  1883  to  reduce  effectual- 
ly the  surplus  revenue,  joined  to  the  defeat  in  the 
House  of  the  Morrison,  or  "horizontal  reduction," 
bill,  by  a  combination  of  Republicans  and  protection- 
ist Democrats,  made  the  tariff  the  most  prominent 
issue  in  the  Presidential  campaign  of  1884,  and  offer- 
ed a  natural  ground  for  fundamental  party  diver- 
gence. There  could  be  no  doubt  that  the  manufact- 
urers who  had  profited  by  high  protection  sought 
the  continuance  of  the  system,  and  that  the  political 

586 


THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

action  of  workingmen  was  influenced  by  arguments 
drawn  from  the  alleged  effect  of  the  tariff  in  raising 
wages.  The  Republicans  nominated  James  G.  Blaine, 
Garfield's  Secretary  of  State  and  trusted  political  ad- 
viser, and  now  the  most  prominent  leader  of  the  party, 
on  a  platform  which  championed  protection  while 
promising  reduction  of  revenue,  urged  efforts  to  se- 
cure international  action  in  fixing  the  relative  values 
of  gold  and  silver,  and  favored  the  extension  of  the 
merit  system  "  to  all  the  grades  of  the  service  to  which 
it  is  applicable."  The  nomination  of  Blaine,  whose 
course  both  as  a  member  of  Congress  and  as  Secretary 
of  State  had  evoked  hostile  criticism,  led  to  an  im- 
mediate revolt  of  Independent  Republicans,  which  in 
turn  affected  strongly  the  action  of  the  Democrats. 
The  Democratic  platform  vigorously  arraigned,  in 
general  and  in  detail,  the  Republican  policy,  particu- 
larly in  regard  to  the  tariff,  favored  "  honest  civil  ser- 
vice reform,"  and  proclaimed  its  belief  in  "honest 
money,  the  gold  and  silver  coinage  of  the  Constitution, 
and  a  circulating  medium  convertible  into  such 
money  without  loss."  The  Democratic  candidate  for 
President  was  Grover  Cleveland,  Governor  of  New 
York,  a  man  in  whose  ability,  honesty,  courage,  and 
sincere  desire  for  reform  the  Independents,  or  "  Mug- 
wumps," enthusiastically  believed. 

,  The  campaign  was  one  of  personalities  rather  than 
of  principles.  Scurrilous  charges  against  the  private 
characters  of  the  candidates  were  widely  circulated. 
The  indiscretion  attributed  to  the  Rev.  Mr.  Burchard, 
who,  addressing  the  Republican  candidate  in  New 
York,  on  behalf  of  his  brother  clergymen,  was  said  to 
have  spoken  of  the  Republicans  as  working  against 
"rum,     Romanism,     and     rebellion,"    cost     Blaine 

S»7 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

many  Irish  votes.  Mr.  Cleveland  was  opposed,  save 
at  the  last,  by  the  powerful  Democratic  organization 
known  as  "Tammany  Hall,"  but  the  Independents 
stood  by  him  to  the  end.  The  vote  was  close,  the 
result  in  New  York  being  for  several  days  in  doubt, 
but  the  final  returns  from  the  country  showed  an 
electoral  vote  for  Cleveland  of  219  against  182  for 
Blaine,  and  a  Democratic  popular  vote  of  4,874,986 
in  a  total  of  over  ten  million. 

As  the  first  Democratic  President  since  Buchanan, 
and  the  trusted  leader  of  the  Independent  Republi- 
cans who  demanded  reform,  and  to  whom,  as  well  as 
to  the  Democrats,  he  owed  his  election,  President 
Cleveland  was  judged  by  standards  more  than  or- 
dinarily exacting.  If  he  did  not  fulfil  all  the  ex- 
pectations of  his  supporters,  he  at  least  did  not  leave 
his  own  opinions  in  doubt,  and  the  shortcomings  of 
his  first  administration  were  due  to  the  strength  and 
virulence  of  the  Republican  organization  and  the 
lack  of  effective  support  within  his  own  party,  rather 
than  to  any  abandonment  of  the  principles  to  which 
he  was  attached.  In  the  checkered  character  of  its 
legislation  the  period  of  his  administration  recalled 
that  of  Hayes.  There  were  political  appointments 
and  removals  in  the  civil  service,  but  there  was  no 
"clean  sweep  ";  the  spirit  as  well  as  the  letter  of  the 
civil  service  law  was  in  general  observed,  and  the 
scope  of  the  law  widened.  Against  the  stream  of  pri- 
vate pension  bills,  many  of  them  of  the  most  indefen- 
sible character,  the  President  opposed  his  veto  to  an 
unprecedented  extent;  and  though  the  total  dis- 
bursements for  pensions  rose  from  $65,000,000  in 
1885  to  $79,000,000  in  1888,  one  of  the  flagrant  abuses 
of  the  system  was  temporarilv  checked. 

588' 


THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

Of  constructive  legislation  there  were  many  notable 
examples.  The  defective  provision  for  the  Presi- 
dential succession  in  case  of  the  death  or  disability 
of  the  President — a  contingency  to  which  the  long 
sickness  of  Garfield  had  pointedly  called  attention — 
was  at  last  remedied  by  an  act  of  January  19,  1886, 
which  devolved  the  succession,  after  the  Vice-presi- 
dent, upon  the  members  of  the  cabinet  in  a  prescribed 
order.1  An  act  of  February  3,  1887,  made  provision 
for  the  counting  of  the  electoral  vote  for  President 
and  Vice-president,  and  rendered  improbable  the  re- 
currence of  any  such  dispute  as  convulsed  the  country 
in  1876-77.  The  great  Interstate  Commerce  act 
of  February  4,  1887,  made  elaborate  provision  for 
the  federal  regulation  of  interstate  and  foreign  com- 
merce, forbade  discrimination  in  rates  for  the  trans- 
portation of  persons  or  merchandise,  and  created  an 
Interstate  Commerce  Commission  to  administer  the 
act.  Subsequent  amendments  have  increased  the 
stringency,  if  not  the  effectiveness,  of  the  act.  Pro- 
vision was  made  for  the  allotment  of  land  in  severalty 
to  the  Indians,  and  for  extending  the  privilege  of 
citizenship  to  Indians  who  should  give  up  their  tribal 
relations  and  accept  allotments  under  the  act.  The 
Tenure  of  Office  act  was  repealed  and  the  trade  dol- 
lar retired.  A  new  anti-polygamy  act  dissolved  the 
Mormon  Church  in  Utah,  and  made  drastic  changes 
in  the  laws  and  administration  of  the  Territory,  with 
the  result  of  effectually  repressing  for  a  number  of 
years  the  political  power  of  Mormonism  and  the  im- 
moral practices  which  that  religion  sanctioned.     The 

1  The  heads  of  the  departments  of  Agriculture  and  of  Labor 
and  Commerce,  who  have  become  cabinet  officers  since  the  pas- 
sage of  the  act,  are  not  included  in  the  line  of  succession. 

589 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

exclusion  of  Chinese  laborers  from  the  United  States, 
which,  by  an  act  of  1882,  had  been  limited  to  ten 
years,  was  made  permanent.  An  act  passed  just  be- 
fore the  close  of  Arthur's  administration  had  pro- 
hibited the  importation  of  contract  laborers.  The 
demand  for  both  of  these  latter  acts  came  largely  from 
the  labor  unions  of  the  country. 

These  were  substantial  gains.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  treatment  of  the  tariff  issue  was  a  disappoint- 
ment. The  Democratic  platforms  have  never  been 
quite  clear  in  regard  to  the  tariff,  and  the  action  of 
the  party  has  reflected  the  indistinctness  of  the  plat- 
forms. The  first  and  second  annual  messages  of 
President  Cleveland  urged  upon  Congress  the  need 
of  tariff  reform  and  reduction  of  the  surplus  revenue ; 
but  the  Republican  Senate  and  Democratic  House 
could  not  agree,  and  the  recommendations  were  un- 
heeded. Accordingly,  in  his  message  of  December, 
1887,  the  President  spoke  with  great  force  of  the 
tariff  alone,  characterizing  the  existing  law  as  "the 
vicious,  inequitable,  and  illogical  source  of  unneces- 
sary taxation,"  and  declared  that  it  was  "  a  condition 
which  confronts  us,  not  a  theory."  The  message  tem- 
porarily solidified  the  Democratic  majority  in  the 
House  and  spurred  it  to  action.  The  Mills  bill,  re- 
moving the  duty  on  wool  and  otherwise  reducing  the 
tariff,  was  passed  by  the  House,  but  the  Senate  pre- 
ferred a  bill  of  its  own,  which,  among  other  things, 
cut  off  half  of  the  existing  duty  on  sugar ;  but,  as  the 
two  bills  were  framed  on  different  principles,  agree- 
ment was  hopeless,  and  nothing  was  done. 

President  Cleveland  was  the  logical  candidate  of 
his  party  in  1888  for  a  second  term,  and  many  Inde- 
pendents, though  openly  regretting  that  he  had  not 

S9o 


THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

further  advanced  the  cause  of  civil  service  reform, 
still  adhered  to  him.  The  Republicans  would  doubt- 
less have  renominated  Blaine  had  not  the  latter  given 
notice,  in  a  letter  to  the  chairman  of  the  Republican 
National  Committee,  that  for  personal  reasons  his 
name  would  not  be  presented  to  the  convention.  In 
his  place  the  convention  nominated  Benjamin  Har- 
rison, of  Indiana,  grandson  of  President  William 
Henry  Harrison.  Save  for  their  attitude  on  the  tar- 
iff— the  great  issue  of  the  campaign — the  party  plat- 
forms were  not  noteworthy.  The  Democratic  con- 
vention endorsed  the  Mills  bill,  though  declining  to 
make  the  resolution  of  endorsement  a  part  of  the 
platform ;  and  the  two  parties  thus  stood  committed, 
the  one  rather  indefinitely  to  tariff  reform,  the  other 
definitely  to  the  maintenance  of  the  existing  system. 
The  public  discussion  of  the  question  was  unprece- 
dentedly  eager,  and  all  sorts  of  graphic  devices  were 
employed  to  win  votes,  especially  from  the  laboring 
men.  The  British  Minister  at  Washington,  Lord 
Sackville,  was  so  indiscreet  as  to  write  a  letter  to  an 
unknown  correspondent  who  assumed  the  name  of 
Murchison,  in  which  he  implied  that  the  success  of 
Mr.  Cleveland  would  be  more  acceptable  to  England 
than  the  election  of  General  Harrison.  The  corre- 
spondence was  published  October  24,  and  President 
Cleveland  shortly  handed  the  unfortunate  diplomat 
his  passports ;  but  the  state  of  public  feeling  was  such 
that  the  incident  undoubtedly  alienated  some  support 
from  the  Democratic  candidate.  Mr.  Cleveland's 
popular  vote  showed  a  plurality  of  about  one  hundred 
thousand,  but  he  received  only  168  electoral  votes 
against  233  for  Harrison. 

The  Democrats  were  pledged  to  tariff  reform,  but 

59i 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

they  could  not  redeem  the  pledge.  The  Senate  bill 
of  1888  was  replaced  by  still  another  at  the  next  ses- 
sion, but  the  House  refused  to  accept  it  as  a  sub- 
stitute for  the  Mills  bill,  and  in  the  ensuing  wrangle 
among  the  Democrats  the  whole  project  met  its 
death.  More  encouraging  was  the  further  extension 
of  the  merit  system,  and  particularly  its  application 
to  the  railway  mail  service.  A  Department  of  Agri- 
culture was  organized.  The  States  of  North  and 
South  Dakota,  Montana,  and  Washington  were  ad- 
mitted to  the  Union,  with  the  ill-concealed  object  of 
thereby  increasing  Republican  strength.  Then,  ad- 
mired more  than  any  of  our  Presidents  for  the  ene- 
mies he  had  made,  President  Cleveland  retired  for 
four  years  to  private  life. 

With  a  President  of  their  own  party,  and  with  work- 
ing majorities  in  both  Senate  and  House,  the  victori- 
ous Republicans  proceeded  to  carry  into  effect  the 
declaration  of  their  platform  in  the  matter  of  pro- 
tection. The  McKinley  tariff  act  of  1890 — so  called 
from  William  McKinley,  of  Ohio,  chairman  of  the 
House  Committee  of  Ways  and  Means — raised  to  un- 
precedented figures  the  duties  on  such  foreign  articles 
as  competed  with  American  manufactures,  placed  on 
the  free  list  such  foreign  articles,  except  luxuries,  as 
were  not  produced  in  this  country,  and  empowered  the 
President  to  put  into  effect  duties  on  certain  other- 
wise free  goods  where  the  countries  from  which  the 
goods  came  imposed  upon  American  goods  "  un- 
equal and  unreasonable"  duties.  In  the  systematic 
exclusion  of  foreign  products  from  the  American 
market  for  the  purpose  of  encouraging  the  consump- 
tion of  American  goods,  the  act  was  a  great  advance 
on  all  of  its  predecessors,  and  forms  in  many  respects 

592 


THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

the  high-water  mark  of  the  protective  policy.  It  was 
observed  that  in  the  debates  the  supporters  of  the 
bill  insisted  upon  the  maintenance  of  protection  as  a 
permanent  policy,  and  that  the  demand  for  the  pro- 
tection of  "infant  industries"  was  no  longer  he  rd. 

Little  was  heard  of  economy  in  Congress,  but  lav- 
ish appropriations  were  the  rule.  There  had  een  a 
surplus  revenue  since  1886,  and  such  proposed  reme- 
dies as  the  retirement  of  the  greenbacks  had  been 
strongly  opposed.  The  pension  -  list,  already  formi- 
dable, was  further  swelled  by  the  passage  of  "  disabili- 
ties" and  " dependent  parents"  acts.  In  the  four 
years  from  1889  to  1893,  the  number  of  pensioners 
increased  from  489,725  to  966,012,  and  the  pension 
disbursements  from  $89,131,968  to  $158,155,342.  A 
new  era  of  naval  construction  was  begun  with  an 
initial  appropriation  of  $25,000,000.  There  were  in- 
creased outlays  for  the  improvement  of  rivers  and 
harbors  and  the  erection  of  public  buildings.  The 
subject  of  silver  was  rendered  dangerous  by  the  re- 
peal of  the  "  Bland  -  Allison  act"  of  1878,  and  the 
passage  in  its  place  of  the  "Sherman  act"  of  1890, 
requiring  the  purchase  by  the  United  States  each 
month  of  four  and  a  half  million  ounces  of  silver  at 
the  current  market-price,  and  the  issue  thereupon  of 
legal -tender  treasury  notes  redeemable  on  demand 
in  either  gold  or  silver.  The  act  was  a  concession  to 
the  silver  sentiment  in  Congress,  and,  though  a  sub- 
stitute for  free  coinage,  showed  that  the  Republicans 
still  "straddled"  the  money  question.  Practically, 
of  course,  the  maintenance  of  the  national  credit 
would  depend  upon  the  ability  of  the  government  to 
redeem  these  silver  notes  in  gold.  An  international 
monetary  conference  at  Brussels,  in  which  the  United 

593 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

States  participated,  discussed  the  demand  for  the 
free  coinage  of  silver,  but  without  reaching  an  agree- 
ment. 

In  almost  every  department  Harrison's  adminis- 
tration was  prol  fie  of  important  legislation.  A  new 
system  of  circuit  courts  of  appeals  was  established  to 
relieve  the  Supreme  Court,  whose  business  had  long 
been  far  in  arrears.  The  establishment  of  interna- 
tional copyright  did  tardy  justice  to  foreign  authors. 
Criminal,  insane,  and  "assisted"  immigrants  were 
excluded  from  the  country.  An  anti-trust  act  made 
illegal  every  contract,  combination,  or  conspiracy  in 
restraint  of  trade  or  commerce  among  the  several 
States  or  with  foreign  nations.  A  fatal  blow  was 
dealt  to  the  Louisiana  Lottery  and  other  similar  enter- 
prises by  the  exclusion  of  lottery  matter  from  the 
mails.  Civil  service  reform  in  the  federal  service 
prospered,  and  the  purity  of  elections  was  aided  by 
the  spread  among  the  States  of  the  Australian  or 
secret  ballot. 

Yet  the  Republicans,  with  all  their  vigorous  activ- 
ity, had  not  the  confidence  of  the  country.  Their 
policy  had  been  effective  and,  in  many  directions, 
beneficent,  but  it  had  been  costly,  and  at  the  core  of 
it  more  regardful  of  "special  interests,"  particularly 
the  protected  industries,  than  of  the  people.  The 
autocratic  methods  of  the  Speaker  of  the  House, 
Thomas  B.  Reed,  of  Maine,  had  virtually  put  an  end 
to  free  speech  in  that  body,  and  threatened  the  rights 
of  the  minority  with  extinction.  From  the  indus- 
trial centres  rose  a  swelling  volume  of  recrimination 
and  complaint,  on  the  one  hand  of  the  oppressive 
exactions  of  organized  capital,  on  the  other  of  the 
tyranny  of  organized  labor.  The  elections  of  1 890  —the 

594 


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KeyAVest 


89ft 


THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

very  year  of  the  McKinley  tariff — were  an  overwhelm- 
ing defeat  for  the  Republicans,  a  Republican  major- 
ity of  10  in  the  House  of  Representatives  becoming 
a  Democratic  majority  of  138.*  There  were  abun- 
dant signs  of  a  hard  contest  in  1892.  A  new  political 
party,  destined  to  have  far-reaching  influence,  had 
lately  come  into  the  field.  In  1890  an  organization 
known  as  the  Farmers'  Alliance  had  been  formed  in 
Kansas,  and  by  the  aid  of  the  Knights  of  Labor  had 
carried  the  State.  The  principal  demands  of  the  or- 
ganization were  the  free  coinage  of  silver  and  sys- 
tems of  national  loans  on  certain  farm  products  and 
farm  lands.  Out  of  this  movement  was  formed,  in 
1 89 1,  the  People's,  or  Populist,  party,  whose  divisive 
influence  upon  the  two  great  parties  was  to  form  one 
of  the  most  striking  political  phenomena  of  the  next 
decade.  The  spread  of  Populism  was  furthered  by 
the  political  activity  of  the  granges,  which  were  es- 
pecially strong  in  Republican  States,  and  whose  ex- 
treme protectionist  views  are  reflected  in  the  de- 
mands of  the  Populist  programme. 

The  selection  of  the  Republican  and  Democratic 
candidates  for  President  in  1892 — Harrison  and 
Cleveland — was  foreordained.  Interest  centred  in 
the  action  of  the  Populists  and  the  attitude  of  the 
parties  towards  silver.  The  Republicans,  afraid  pub- 
licly to  proclaim  the  gold  standard,  declared  for  bi- 
metallism "with  such  restrictions  and  under  such 
provisions"  as  would  insure  the  parity  of  values  of 
the  two  metals.  The  Democrats  said  substantially 
the  same  thing,  adding  a  de  unciation  of  the  Sher- 
man act  as  "a  cowardly  makeshift."  The  Populists 
demanded  the  "free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver 
and  gold  at  the  present  legal  ratio  of  sixteen  to  one." 

595 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

The  candidate  of  the  People's  party  was  General 
James  B.  Weaver,  of  Iowa,  the  same  who  had  been 
the  Greenback  candidate  in  1880.  The  Republicans 
suffered  from  the  leek  of  enthusiasm  for  Harrison 
and  the  severe  defeat  of  1890  in  the  States,  and  the 
Democrats  from  a  party  split  in  New  York,  while  the 
extraordinary  hold  of  Populism  in  the  West  and 
South  led  to  fusions  which  baffled  all  political  calcu- 
lations save  as  they  indicated  Democratic  rather  than 
Republican  success.  The  result  of  the  election  was 
a  pronounced  Democratic  victory.  While  Mr.  Cleve- 
land did  not  receive  a  majority  of  the  total  vote,  his 
vote  exceeded  by  380,000  that  of  Harrison;  and  he 
received  277  of  the  444  electoral  votes.  The  South 
was  solidly  Democratic;  most  of  the  doubtful  States 
had  been  won  from  the  Republicans,  and  California, 
Wisconsin,  and  Illinois  were  in  the  Democratic  col- 
umn. On  the  other  hand,  the  Populist  candidate  had 
polled  over  a  million  votes  and  won  twenty-two  elec- 
toral votes. 

The  Congress  which  expired  March  3,  1893,  con- 
tinued the  policy  of  extravagant  appropriations  not- 
withstanding the  election,  and  left  the  incoming 
Democratic  administration  to  deal  with  the  financial 
situation,  now  rapidly  becoming  acute.  The  com- 
pulsory purchase  of  silver  bullion  under  the  Sherman 
act,  and  the  issue  thereon  of  notes  redeemable  in 
coin,  together  with  the  maintenance  in  circulation  of 
nearly  $350,000,000  in  greenbacks,  imposed  a  burden 
upon  the  Treasury  which  it  could  not  long  bear ;  for 
the  Treasury  properly  interpreted  "coin"  to  mean 
gold.  The  decline  in  the  market  price  of  silver 
brought  the  intrinsic  value  of  a  dollar  as  low  as  sixty- 
seven  cents,  while  the  "  gold  reserve"  in  the  Treasury, 

596 


THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

nominally  $100,000,000,  was  with  difficulty  kept 
above  that  point,  and  shortly  fell  below  it.  In  June 
the  mints  in  India  were  closed  to  free  coinage,  and  the 
announcement  added  to  the  uncertainty  already  gen- 
eral in  this  country.  Foreign  holders  of  American 
securities,  distrusting  the  ability  of  the  United  States 
to  maintain  the  gold  standard,  made  heavy  sales  in 
the  American  market.  The  new  administration  was 
hardly  installed,  accordingly,  before  a  disastrous  panic 
broke  upon  the  country,  with  all  the  familiar  accom- 
paniments of  bank  and  commercial  failures,  the  clos- 
ing of  factories  and  mills,  curtailment  of  production, 
railroad  receiverships,  and  wide-spread  suffering  and 
loss.  So  large  was  the  number  of  the  unemployed 
that  many  cities  and  towns  took  up  on  a  large  scale 
the  work  of  relief.  President  Cleveland  called  a 
special  session  of  Congress  for  August  7th,  but  so  pow- 
erful was  the  agitation  for  free  coinage  of  silver  that  it 
was  not  until  November  1st  that  the  Sherman  act  was 
repealed.  As  a  step  in  the  direction  of  currency  re- 
form, the  repeal  was  of  great  importance,  but  the 
economic  question  of  the  reform  of  the  monetary 
system  and  the  political  issue  of  free  coinage  had  yet 
to  be  dealt  with. 

The  Democratic  pledge  of  tariff  reform  was  only  in 
part  fulfilled  by  the  passage,  in  August,  1894,  of  the 
"Gorman-Wilson"  tariff  act,  which  reduced  many 
duties,  put  wool  on  the  free  list,  and  established  an 
income-tax ;  for  the  bill  as  passed  by  the  House  was 
so  altered  in  the  Senate  as  to  rob  it  of  most  of  its  re- 
form character.  President  Cleveland  expressed  his 
opinion  of  it  by  allowing  the  bill  to  become  law  with- 
out his  approval.  A  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court 
presently  adjudged  the  income-tax  unconstitutional. 

597 


HISTORY    OP    THE    UNITED    STATES 

The  revenue  fell  off,  endangering  both  the  gold  re- 
serve and  the  ordinary  resources  of  the  government, 
and  between  January,  1894,  and  January,  1896,  about 
$260,000,000  of  bonds  were  sold  by  the  Treasury.  The 
determination  of  President  Cleveland  to  maintain 
both  the  gold  reserve  and  the  national  credit  was  high- 
ly applauded,  but  there  was  strong  criticism  of  both 
the  policy  and  the  manner  of  selling  bonds  without 
direct  authority  of  Congress. 

The  strained  financial  condition  bred  industrial 
disturbances,  too,  of  a  serious  sort.  "  Coxey's  army" 
of  the  idle  and  ne'er-do-well,  marching  from  Ohio  to 
lay  its  grievances  before  the  government  at  Wash- 
ington, was  only  the  spectacular  sign  of  wide-spread 
distress  and  discontent  in  the  labor  world,  and  of  the 
instinctive  feeling  that  the  national  administration 
was  in  some  way  responsible.  A  great  strike  of  coal- 
miners,  in  the  spring  of  1894,  extending  into  early 
summer,  was  hardly  adjusted  before  a  boycott  of  the 
Pullman  cars,  beginning  with  a  strike  of  employes 
against  a  reduction  of  wages,  and  furthered  by  the 
co-operation  of  the  American  Railway  Union,  de- 
moralized railroad  traffic,  endangered  life  and  prop- 
erty, and  bred  riot  and  anarchy  at  Chicago  and  other 
places.  The  Governor  of  Illinois  having  refused  to 
take  adequate  steps  to  protect  railroad  property  and 
quell  the  disturbances,  President  Cleveland  pro- 
claimed martial  law,  and  used  regular  troops  to  re- 
store order.  No  act  of  the  President's  public  life  was 
a  more  conspicuous  illustration  of  his  courage,  but  its 
constitutional  propriety  was  unquestionable,  and  the 
better  public  opinion  sustained  it.  Brooklyn,  New 
York,  suffered  a  severe  strike  of  its  street-railway 
employes,  necessitating  the  use  of  militia. 

598 


THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

It  was  in  foreign  affairs,  however,  that  President 
Cleveland's  second  administration  was  most  prolific 
of  vivid  interest.  For  several  years  there  had  been 
a  perceptible  growth  of  public  feeling  in  favor  of  a 
"strong  foreign  policy" — a  feeling  always  easily 
roused  in  a  powerful  democracy  which  is  also  young. 
An  early  manifestation  of  this  feeling  was  the  in- 
creased appropriations  under  Harrison  for  naval  con- 
struction; and  the  policy  thus  inaugurated  was  con- 
tinued under  President  Cleveland.  In  1895  a  proj- 
ect for  a  ship-canal  across  Nicaragua,  with  the  United 
States  as  the  holder  of  more  than  two-thirds  of  the 
stock  and  the  guarantor  of  the  bonds  of  the  company, 
came  before  Congress,  where  it  was  to  continue  to  be 
for  some  years  aggressively  urged.  The  bill  was  pass- 
ed by  the  Senate,  but  left  without  action  by  the  House. 
A  more  violent  issue  was  preparing.  The  boundary 
between  Venezuela  and  British  Guiana  had  been  long 
in  dispute.  Great  Britain,  weary  of  the  controversy, 
and  a  bit  contemptuous  of  its  opponent,  at  last  pro- 
posed summarily  to  end  the  matter  by  enforcing  its 
claim.  Thereupon  ensued  a  long  diplomatic  cor- 
respondence between  the  United  States  and  Great 
Britain,  in  which  the  interest  of  this  country  in  the 
controversy  on  account  of  the  Monroe  doctrine  was 
vigorously  set  forth.  As  Great  Britain  showed  no 
sign  of  yielding,  President  Cleveland  startled  the 
country  by  sending  to  Congress,  December  17,  1895, 
a  special  message  recommending  the  appointment  of 
a  commission  to  determine  "  the  true  divisional  line" 
between  the  Republic  of  Venezuela  and  British 
Guiana,  and  declaring  that,  in  his  opinion,  it  would 
be  the  duty  of  the  United  States,  after  the  report  was 
made  and  accepted,  "to  resist,  by  every  means  in  its 

599 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

power,  as  a  wilful  aggression  upon  its  rights  and  in- 
terests, the  appropriation  by  Great  Britain  of  any 
lands  or  the  exercise  of  governmental  jurisdiction 
over  any  territory  which,  after  investigation,  we  have 
determined  of  right  belongs  to  Venezuela."  So  di- 
rect a  threat  of  war  had  not  been  intimated  by  any 
President,  and  the  "jingo"  spirit  ran  high;  stocks 
fell,  the  gold  reserve  declined,  and  in  January  there 
was  a  new  bond  issue.  Congress  promptly  made 
provision  for  the  commission,  and  in  February,  1897, 
the  commission  made  its  report.  Shortly  before  the 
presentation  of  the  report,  however,  Great  Britain 
and  Venezuela  agreed  by  treaty  to  refer  the  boun- 
dary controversy  to  arbitration.  The  award  of  the 
tribunal  of  arbitration,  rendered  October  3,  1899, 
sustained  in  general  the  British  contention. 

In  striking  contrast  with  this  cavalier  treatment 
of  the  Venezuelan  matter  was  the  course  of  the  ad- 
ministration in  negotiating  with  Great  Britain  a  gen- 
eral treaty  of  arbitration,  "  under  which  all  questions 
arising  between  the  two  governments  were  to  be 
submitted  to  international  tribunals/'  The  treaty 
aroused  earnest  discussion,  not  only  as  to  its  details, 
but  also  as  to  the  principle  involved.  Eventually  the 
Senate  rejected  it,  and  an  opportunity  to  lessen,  by 
international  "agreement,  the  likelihood  of  war  be- 
tween two  nations  that  ought  always  to  be  at  peace 
was  lost. 

Brilliant,  however,  as  was  the  second  administra- 
tion of  President  Cleveland  in  some  respects,  it  was 
in  other  respects  discredited.  Between  the  President 
and  his  party  there  was  a  steadily  widening  breach. 
On  the  question  of  silver  there  wTas  entire  absence  of 
accord.     Notwithstanding  the  repeal  of  the  Sherman 

600 


THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

act,  a  majority  of  each  House  of  Congress  favored  free 
coinage.  A  bill  to  coin  the  "seigniorage" — that  is, 
the  difference,  about  $70,000,000,  between  the  coin 
value  and  bullion  value  of  the  silver  purchased  under 
the  Sherman  act — was  passed  in  1894,  but  was  vetoed 
by  the  President.  The  fall  elections  of  1894  once 
more  gave  the  Republicans  control  of  the  House  of 
Representatives  by  a  large  majority.  Yet  the  party 
situation,  so  far  as  it  stood  related  to  the  coming 
Presidential  contest,  was  far  from  clear.  Mr.  Cleve- 
land was  not  likely  to  be  for  a  fourth  time  a  candi- 
date, yet  the  Democrats  had  no  man  of  approximate- 
ly equal  caliber  to  offer  in  his  place.  In  the  West  the 
Populist  party,  now  united  for  free  silver,  had  at- 
tained great  strength,  and  in  several  States  outnum- 
bered both  Democrats  and  Republicans.  Within  the 
Republican  party  there  was  a  bitter  struggle  for 
leadership  between  William  McKinley,  a  Representa- 
tive from  Ohio,  and  official  sponsor  for  the  tariff  act 
that  bore  his  name,  and  Thomas  B.  Reed,  of  Maine, 
sometime  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives. 
Reed's  power  as  a  public  man  had  been  chiefly  shown 
in  his  absolute  control  of  parliamentary  procedure  in 
the  House  and  his  caustic  comments  on  fellow-mem- 
bers and  measures;  whether  or  not  he  was  also  a 
statesman  had  not  yet  appeared.  Even  the  Prohibi- 
tion party,  still  maintaining  its  national  organization 
in  spite  of  the  waning  strength  of  its  special  cause, 
divided  on  the  silver  issue. 

The  McKinley  forces,  under  the  astute  leadership 
of  Senator  Marcus  A.  Hanna,  of  Ohio,  captured  the 
national  Republican  organization,  and  at  the  national 
convention  at  St.  Louis,  in  June,  1896,  nominated 
their  candidate  on  the  first  ballot.  Silver  was  the  only 
39  601 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

issue,  and  on  this  the  platform  declared  opposition 
to  free  coinage  "except  by  international  agreement 
with  the  leading  commercial  nations  of  the  world," 
which  the  party  pledged  itself  to  promote.  The  re- 
jection by  the  convention  of  a  free-coinage  substitute 
offered  by  Senator  Teller,  of  Colorado,  was  followed 
by  the  retirement  of  thirty-four  members  from  the  hall. 
The  Democratic  convention  surrendered  bodily  to  the 
silver  wing  of  the  party,  adopted  a  platform  which 
demanded  the  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver  at 
the  existing  ratio  "without  waiting  for  the  aid  or 
consent  of  any  other  nation,"  and  nominated  for 
President  William  J.  Bryan,  of  Nebraska,  whose 
magnetic  plea  before  the  convention  for  silver  created 
a  tremendous  sensation.  The  Populists  rejected  a 
proposed  alliance  with  the  Democrats,  though  they 
nominated  Mr.  Bryan,  as  did  also  the  National  Silver 
party. 

Iri  the  earnestness  of  its  discussion  and  the  strenu- 
ousness  of  its  effort,  the  campaign  of  1896  was  un- 
paralleled. To  many  the  sole  question  presented  was 
that  of  national  honor ;  and  while  the  Republican  plat- 
form apparently  courted  silver  with  a  saving  clause, 
there  was  apparently  no  hope  of  sound  money  from 
any  other  source.  The  country  was  flooded  with 
financial  literature.  Thousands  of  gold  Democrats 
"bolted"  both  Mr.  Bryan  and  his  platform,  and  an- 
nounced their  intention  to  support  the  Republican 
candidate;  and  the  independent  vote  was  largely 
turned  in  the  same  direction.  The  great  battle-ground 
was  the  central  West,  where  the  strong  silver  senti- 
ment and  the  concentration  of  the  votes  of  several 
parties  on  the  same  candidate  created  a  formidable 
opposition   to   the   Republicans.     Mr.    Bryan   made 

602 


THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

numerous  speeches,  while  Mr.  McKinley  received  a 
stream  of  delegations  from  all  parts  of  the  country  at 
his  home  at  Canton,  Ohio.  The  attitude  of  the  labor 
vote  was  ground  for  anxiety,  and  there  were  rumors 
of  intimidation  practised  by  large  employers  of  labor 
to  induce  votes  for  the  Republican  candidate.  The 
election  was  a  triumph  for  the  "  sound  money"  cause. 
Not  only  did  McKinley  receive  a  clean  majority  of 
the  popular  vote,  but  he  also  received  271  electoral 
votes,  against  176  for  Bryan.  Even  the  South  was 
divided,  the  votes  of  Maryland  and  West  Virginia, 
with  twelve  of  the  thirteen  votes  of  Kentucky,  being 
given  to  the  Republican  candidate.  On  the  other 
hand,  Mr.  Bryan  had  won  the  Republican  States  of 
Kansas  and  Nebraska,  all  but  three  of  the  southern 
States,  and  the  mining  and  Pacific  coast  States,  ex- 
cept California  and  Oregon.  The  lines  of  battle  in 
1 900  were  clearly  to  be  seen  as  the  smoke  cleared  from 
the  field  in  1896. 

The  first  administration  of  President  McKinley  will 
always  be  associated  with  the  policy  of  "expansion," 
the  adoption  of  which  by  the  United  States  marks 
the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  American  history.  Al- 
most from  the  beginning  of  the  government  under  the 
Constitution  there  had  been,  as  we  have  seen,  enlarge- 
ment of  the  national  boundaries  and  incorporation  of 
hitherto  alien  soil;  but  not  until  1898  did  the  United 
States  venture  to  extend  its  jurisdiction  over  re- 
mote islands,  or  undertake  the  management  of  col- 
onies on  the  other  side  of  the  globe.  The  anomalous 
situation  in  Cuba  was  the  provocation.  Of  the  few 
possessions  remaining  to  Spain  in  the  New  World, 
Cuba  was  the  most  important.  Spain,  however,  true 
to  its  historic  policy,  did  little  for  the  development  of 

603 


HISTORY    OF    THE     UNITED    STATES 

the  island,  gave  to  its  people  gross  misgovernment, 
and  administered  it  with  a  view  to  little  else  than  the 
revenue  to  be  extracted  from  it.  The  result  was  a 
succession  of  revolts  against  the  Spanish  authority, 
maintained  by  guerilla  warfare,  and'  attended  with 
destruction  of  life  and  property  and  grave  disturb- 
ance of  business  interests.  The  latest  outbreak  had 
occurred  in  February,  1895,  and  the  Cuban  resistance 
was  continued  in  spite  of  great  efforts  made  by  Spain 
to  overcome  it.  The  United  States  could  not  remain 
an  indifferent  spectator  of  events  in  a  country  so  near 
its  own  shores,  and  with  which  it  had  intimate  and 
important  commercial  dealings,  while  the  natural  feel- 
ing of  sympathy  for  a  people  struggling  for  indepen- 
dence was  intensified  by  the  publication  of  pitiful 
stories  of  the  sufferings  of  the  Cubans  under  the  in- 
creasing rigors  of  Spanish  coercion,  and  of  the  devas- 
tation of  the  country  by  the  operations  of  war. 

The  demand  for  the  recognition  of  Cuban  belliger- 
ency, increasingly  urged  in  Congress  and  in  the  coun- 
try, was  for  some  time  firmly  resisted  by  President 
McKinley,  as  it  had  been  by  President  Cleveland, 
partly  because  of  uncertainty  regarding  the  actual 
condition  of  affairs  in  the  island,  and  partly  because 
of  the  breach  with  Spain  which  such  recognition  would 
inevitably  cause.  On  the  night  of  February  15,  1898, 
however,  the  United  States  battle-ship  Maine,  lying  in 
the  harbor  of  Havana  ostensibly  on  a  friendly  visit, 
was  blown  up  and  266  of  its  officers  and  crew  were 
killed.  Boards  of  inquiry  appointed  separately  by 
the  United  States  and  by  Spain  reached  different  con- 
clusions as  to  the  circumstances  of  the  explosion ;  but 
it  was  apparent  that,  without  some  extraordinary 
change  in  conditions,  war  was  inevitable.     The  prog- 

604 


PHILIPPINE    ISLANDS,    1902 


THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

ress  of  events  was  rapid.  An  appropriation,  March 
9th,  of  $50,000,000  for  the  national  defence  was  fol- 
lowed, April  1  ith,  by  a  request  from  President  McKin- 
ley  for  authority  to  intervene  and  put  a  stop  to  hos- 
tilities in  the  island.  Nine  days  later  a  resolution 
of  Congress  formally  recognized  the  independence  of 
Cuba  and  demanded  the  withdrawal  of  Spain.  The 
declaration  of  war  followed  on  the  25th,  a  blockade 
of  the  north  coast  of  the  island  having  been  already 
proclaimed,  and  125,000  volunteers  were  called  for. 

The  short  story  of  the  four  months'  war  with  Spain 
is  one  of  brilliant  success  for  the  American  arms,  al- 
beit against  an  enemy  incomparably  weaker  in  every 
respect.  The  only  real  danger  of  a  prolongation  of 
the  contest  was  in  the  possibility  of  European  inter- 
vention, and  the  friendly  attitude  of  Great  Britain 
nipped  intervention  in  the  bud.  In  the  early  morn- 
ing of  May  1st,  Commodore  Dewey,  in  command  of 
the  Asiatic  squadron,  destroyed  the  Spanish  fleet  in 
Manila  Bay,  and  subsequently  held  control  of  the 
harbor  until  the  middle  of  August,  when  the  arrival 
of  troops  from  San  Francisco  enabled  the  Ameri- 
cans to  take  the  city.  A  Spanish  fleet  under  Admiral 
Cervera,  attempting  to  escape,  July  3d,  from  the  har- 
bor of  Santiago,  where  it  had  been  blockaded,  was 
destroyed  by  the  American  squadron  under  Rear- 
Admiral  Sampson.  Santiago  surrendered  on  the 
17th.  The  island  of  Puerto  Rico  was  occupied  in  July 
without  serious  hinderance.  With  its  colonies  lost 
and  its  navy  destroyed,  Spain  sued  for  peace,  and  on 
August  12th  hostilities  were  suspended. 

The  treaty  of  Paris,  December  10,  1898,  which  end- 
ed the  war,  provided  for  the  relinquishment  by  Spain 
of  all  claim  to  Cuba  and  the  temporary  occupation 

605 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

of  the  island  by  the  United  States,  the  cession  to  the 
United  States  of  Puerto  Rico,  Guam,  and  the  Philip- 
pines, and  the  payment  to  Spain  of  $20,000,000.  The 
terms  of  the  treaty  immediately  precipitated  a  vio- 
lent discussion.  While  the  moral  obligation  of  the 
United  States  to  aid  in  the  reconstruction  of  Cuba, 
and  protect  it  for  a  time  from  outside  interference, 
was  generally  admitted,  and  while  the  nearness  of 
Puerto  Rico  gave  it  natural  relations  to  the  United 
States,  the  acquisition  of  the  remote  Philippines  was 
by  many  vigorously  opposed.  The  "anti-imperial- 
ists," as  they  were  generally  called,  pointed  out  that 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  was  ill-adapted 
to  the  exigencies  of  a  colonial  system,  and  that  the 
possession  of  dependencies  in  a  remote  quarter  of  the 
globe  would  mean  large  expense  and  greatly  increased 
danger  of  foreign  war.  The  advocates  of  "expan- 
sion," on  the  other  hand,  claimed  that  the  Philippines 
were  the  legitimate  spoils  of  a  righteous  war,  and  that 
the  nation  ought  not  to  shrink  from  the  new  respon- 
sibilities thus  placed  upon  it.  It  was  a  struggle  be- 
tween those  who  would  have  the  United  States  de- 
velop in  the  future  along  the  lines  laid  down  in  the 
past,  with  regard  for  tradition  and  the  limitations  of 
the  Constitution,  and  those  who  would  see  the  United 
States  a  world  power  like  some  of  its  fellows ;  between 
those  who  still  claimed  to  follow  the  God  of  Israel 
and  those  who  would  have  gods  like  those  of  other 
nations. 

President  McKinley,  though  a  firm  believer  in  "ex- 
pansion," moved  with  the  caution  of  the  practised 
politician.  The  reorganization  of  Cuba  and  Puerto 
Rico  proceeded  rapidly,  and  with  beneficent  results 
for   both   islands.     With   the    Philippines,    however, 

606 


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THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

the  case  was  different.  Such  of  the  Filipinos  as  fol- 
lowed Aguinaldo  were  bitterly  opposed  to  the  Ameri- 
can occupation,  and  two  years  of  war,  marked  oc- 
casionally by  gross  excesses  on  the  part  of  the  Ameri- 
can troops,  were  necessary  before  the  process  of 
"benevolent  assimilation"  was  approximately  es- 
tablished. The  demand  for  independence,  either 
immediate  or  in  the  near  future,  repeatedly  urged  by 
the  Filipinos  and  by  their  friends  in  this  country,  has 
thus  far  failed  to  be  listened  to.  The  development 
of  a  colonial  system  of  administration  has  been  begun, 
although  the  affairs  of  the  islands  are  still  under  the 
immediate  supervision  of  the  War  Department.  A 
Philippine  commission,  established  in  July,  1901, 
with  full  powers  for  the  government  of  the  islands, 
was  followed  in  July,  1902,  by  the  establishment  of 
civil  government  under  an  act  of  Congress.  Com- 
munication was  facilitated  by  the  laying  of  a  Pacific 
cable,  opened  July  4,  1904,  while  a  tariff  act  of  March 
8,  1902,  imposed  duties  on  goods  imported  into  this 
country  from  the  Philippines.  Puerto  Rico  and 
Hawaii — the  latter  group  of  islands  having  been  an- 
nexed to  the  United  States  in  1897 — received  in  1900 
special  forms  of  government.  The  American  occupa- 
tion of  Cuba  came  to  an  end  May  20,  1902,  and  the 
government  of  the  island  was  left  to  its  people. 

The  notable  domestic  and  diplomatic  questions  of 
President  McKinley's  first  administration  arose  part- 
ly from  the  war  with  Spain  and  partly  from  the  gen- 
eral policy  of  the  Republicans.  The  outbreak  of  the 
war  found  the  army  lamentably  deficient,  and  later 
investigation  showed  some  scandalous  conditions  in 
the  management  of  the  camps  and  the  provisioning 
of  the  troops.     The  navy,  on  the  other  hand,  won 

607 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

laurels  for  its  work,  though  the  bitter  fight  made  by 
the  friends  of  Rear-Admiral  Schley  against  the  award 
to  Rear-Admiral  Sampson  of  the  credit  for  the  de- 
struction of  Cervera's  fleet  assumed  for  a  time  nation- 
al importance,  and  left  a  painful  impression.  The 
immediate  expenses  of  the  war  were  more  than  met 
by  an  increase  of  the  internal  revenue  taxes  and  a 
popular  loan  of  $400,000,000 — the  latter  being  several 
times  oversubscribed.  The  settlement  of  the  cur- 
rency question  was  advanced  by  the  passage  of  an 
act  making  the  gold  dollar  the  unit  of  value,  while 
the  discovery  of  gold  in  the  Klondike  region,  in  the 
summer  of  1897,  did  much  to  break  the  force  of  the 
free -coinage  argument.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Dingley  tariff  of  July,  1897,  though  "  thoroughly 
protective  in  its  provisions,"  has  not  prevented  the 
recurrence  of  a  deficit  in  time  of  peace,  or  so  far  in- 
sured general  prosperity  as  to  prevent  extensive  re- 
ductions of  wages  in  manufacturing  and  other  employ- 
ments. The  Nicaragua  canal  project  continued  to 
be  urged  as  a  great  national  duty,  and  in  1901  the 
Clayton-Bulwer  treaty  of  1850  was  superseded  by 
the  Hay-Pauncefote  treaty,  under  which  the  control 
of  an  interoceanic  canal,  when  constructed,  would  be 
assumed  by  the  United  States.  The  long  controversy 
over  routes  and  plans  was  terminated  by  the  treaty 
of  November  18,  1903,  between  the  United  States  and 
the  Republic  of  Panama,  under  which  the  United 
States  guaranteed  the  independence  of  Panama— 
which  had  seceded  from  Columbia — and  gained  con- 
trol of  the  Panama  route.  The  proposals  of  The 
Hague  conference  for  the  establishment  of  an  inter- 
national court  of  arbitration  were  ratified  by  the 
Senate  in  February,  1900. 

608 


THE    NEWEST    HISTORY 

Expansion  and  silver  were  the  predominant  issues 
in  the  Presidential  campaign  of  1900.     The  Repub- 
lican and  Democratic  candidates  were  the  same  as 
in  1896.     On  the  silver  question  the  declarations  of 
the  two  platforms  were   as  divergent  as  ever;   but 
while  the  Republican  platform  endorsed  the  McKinley 
administration,  and  promised  the  inhabitants  of  the 
possessions  acquired  from  Spain  "  the  largest  measure 
of  self-government  consistent  with  their  welfare  and 
our  duties,"  the  Democratic  platform  declared  against 
11  imperialism,"  without  condemning  territorial  expan- 
sion "when  it  takes  in  desirable  territory  which  can 
be  erected  into  States  of  the  Union,  and  whose  people 
are  willing  and  fit  to  become  American  citizens."   For 
Vice-president  the  Republicans  nominated  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  a  strenuous  American,  a  vigorous  cham- 
pion of  civil  service  reform,  and  at  the  moment  Gov- 
ernor of  New  York;  the  Democrats  nominated  Adlai 
E.  Stevenson,  of  Illinois.     Notwithstanding  the  sup- 
port of  Bryan  by  the  Populists  and  silver  Repub- 
licans, the  election  was   another  great   Republican 
victory.     In  a  total  vote  of  nearly  14,000,000,  Presi- 
dent McKinley  had  a  plurality  over  Bryan  of  about 
850,000,  and  a  majority  over  all  opponents  of  over 
456,000;  while  of  the  447  electoral  votes  the  Repub- 
lican candidates  received  292.     It  was  possible  to  in- 
terpret the  election  as  an  indorsement  of  expansion, 
but  there  was  no  doubt  that  it  was  a  victory  for 
"sound  money." 

President  McKinley 's  caution  and  hesitancy,  his 
failure,  notwithstanding  an  unusual  power  of  cogent 
and  dignified  speech,  to  declare  himself  with  definite- 
ness,  his  unsatisfactory  treatment  of  the  civil  service, 
and  his  obvious  tenderness  towards  great  financial  in- 

609 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 

teres ts,  had  evoked  much  criticism  even  within  his 
own  party,  and  led  to  the  charge  that  he  was  not,  in 
public  affairs,  his  own  master.  Later  opinion  has 
been  inclined  to  recognize  in  him  one  of  the  most 
astute  politicians  that  ever  occupied  the  Presidential 
chair.  But  he  was  not  to  serve  long  either  his  ene- 
mies or  his  friends.  He  was  shot  by  an  anarchist  on 
September  6,  1901,  and  died  eight  days  later;  and 
Vice-president  Roosevelt  reigned  in  his  stead.  Of  all 
the  men  of  prominence  in  the  Republican  ranks,  none 
would  less  probably  have  been  made  Vice-president 
had  his  succession  to  the  Presidency  been  thought  in 
any  way  probable ;  for  none  was  of  more  independent 
temper,  none  more  impatient  of  tradition,  none  more 
out  of  sympathy  with  the  policy  of  favoritism  for 
special  interests  with  which  the  Republican  organi- 
zation was  identified.  The  dignity  and  restraint  with 
which  Mr.  Roosevelt  took  up  the  duties  of  an  ofhce 
thus  sadly  thrust  upon  him  won  hearty  commenda- 
tion and  everywhere  inspired  confidence.  It  was  clear 
beyond  need  of  demonstration  that  there  had  entered 
the  field  of  national  politics  a  forceful  personality, 
whose  course  under  the  stress  of  party  exigency  none, 
indeed,  could  with  confidence  predict,  but  with  which 
every  enemy  of  good  government  would  have  to 
reckon. 


INDEX 


Abbott,  Dr.  C.  C,  24. 
Abenaki    Indians,   their  treaty, 
179. 

Abercrombie,     General     James, 

182. 
Abolition  movement,  434,  443 . 

444,  448,   450. 
Abolition  of  slavery,  434- 
Abolitionists,     452,     453,     461, 

466,  474,   5°°- 
Acadia,    179,    181. 
Act  of  Navigation,  the,  210. 
Adams,    Abigail,    quoted,    241, 

243;  also,  257,  300,  309,  324, 

325,  330. 
Adams,    Charles    Francis,    382, 

569- 

Adams,  John,  his  view  of  town- 
meetings,  230;  his  election  as 
President,  319;  his  character, 
323;  his  wife,  324;  his  cabinet, 
326;  his  policy  towards  France, 
ibid.;  his  rupture  with  his 
party,  328;  his  correspond- 
ence with  Mercy  Warren,  335; 
his  old  age,  342;  also,  230, 
242,  243. 

Adams,  John  Quincy,  quoted, 
372,  382;  vote  for  Missouri 
Compromise,  373;  Presidency 
of ,  385 ;  internal  improvements 
recommended  by,  397;  the 
same  accomplished,  398;  en- 
tertainments of,  406;  cir- 
cumstances of  his  election, 
407,  418;  his  policy,  409;  his 
defeat,  410,  419;  his  want 
of  popularity,  419;  also,  411, 
414,  421,  452,  459,  460. 

6 


Adams,     Mrs.     John     Quincy, 

377. 
"Adams  and  Liberty,"  song  of, 

327. 
Adams,  Samuel,  243,  280,  291, 

322. 
Adolphus,  Gustavus,  157. 
"Adventurer,"  the  word,  137. 
African  negroes,  435,  440. 
Aguinaldo,   607. 
Alabama,  admitted  as  a  State. 

372;     passed     ordinance     of 

secession,  510. 
Alaska  purchased  from  Russia, 

563. 
Alexander,  William  E.,  395,  415. 
Alexander   VI.,   Pope,  bulls  of, 

73.   io4- 
Algerine  pirates,    285. 
Algonquins,  the,  124. 
Aliaco,  P.  de,   53. 
Alien    and    Sedition   laws,   328, 

334- 
Allen,  Ethan,   240. 
Alligators,  early  descriptions  of, 

86. 
Allison,  William  B.,  548. 
Ambrister,  R.  C,  372,  418. 
American   Antislavery   Society, 

448. 
American  Colonization  Society, 

American  flora,  209;  finance, 
306;  physique,  311;  seamen 
impressed,  347,  348;  litera- 
ture,  398. 

Americans,  the  first,  1. 

Ames,  Fisher,  288,  304,  378. 

Amidas,   Philip,   95. 

11 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Anderson,  Major,  514. 
Andre,  Major  John,  279. 
Andros,  Governor  Edmund,  176, 

177,  207,  213,  214,  215. 
Andros,  Lady,   213. 
Anghiera,     P.     M.     d'      (Peter 

Martyr),    54,    56,   66,   68,   80, 

82,   112. 
Anna,      Santa,      President      of 

Mexico,  459,  471. 
Anne,  Queen,   178. 
Antietam,   522. 
Anti-imperialists,  606. 
Antiquitates  Americanos,  26,  41. 
Appomattox  Court-House,  Lee's 

surrender  at,   532. 
Arbuthnot,  A.,  371,  418. 
Archer,  W.  S.,  405. 
Architecture  in  colonies,  223. 
Aristophanes,   186. 
Aristotle's  narrow  sea,   53. 
Arkansas,  seceded  from  Union, 

516;  reconstructed,  543. 
Armistead,  Colonel  George,  358. 
Army,  Revolutionary,  organiza- 
tion of,  246;  condition  of,  248; 

Washington's  views  of,    249; 

statistics  of,  273,  280;  drilled 

by  Steuben,  274;   disbanded, 

280. 
Arnold,  Benedict,  42,  240,  251, 

279. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  187. 
Arthur,    Chester    A.,    succeeds 

to  the  Presidency,  585. 
Ashburton  treaty,  463. 
Asher,  Dr.,  82. 
Ashley,  James  A.,  557. 
Asiatics  in  America,  21. 
Astor,  John  Jacob,  334. 
Atlanta,    General    Sherman    at, 

529- 
Atlantic  cable  laid,  580. 
Australian,     or    secret,     ballot, 

594- 
Avalon,  colony  of,   156. 
Aztecs,  2,  4,  16,  18,  22,  60. 

Baccalaos,  the,  81,  112. 
Bache,  Mrs.  B.  F.,  406. 
Bacon,  Lord,  83. 
Bacon,  Nathaniel,  Jr.,  171. 


Bacourt,  M.,  404. 

Bagot,  Sir  Charles,  377. 

Bahia,  alleged  column  at,  42. 

Balboa.      (See  Nunez,  Vasco.) 

Baltimore,  Cecil,  Lord,  156,  162, 
190. 

Baltimore,  George,  Lord,  156. 

Baltimore  founded,  156;  "hor- 
rors of,"  353. 

Bancroft,  George,  26,  43,  105, 
218,   260. 

Bancroft,  H.  H.,  4. 

Bandelier,  A.  F.,  5,  8,  13. 

Bank,  United  States,  334,  431, 
432,  443,  456,  462. 

Barclay,  Robert,   198. 

Barker,  Jacob,  358. 

Barlow,  Arthur,  95,  378. 

Barton,  Mrs.  (See  Livingston, 
Cora.) 

Basque  fishermen,  112. 

Beamish,  C.  C,  41. 

Beaujour,  Chevalier  de,  311. 

Beauregard,  General,  514,  515. 

Becher,  Captain,  59. 

Belknap,  Dr.  Jeremy,  quoted. 
182. 

Bell,  John,  candidate  for  Presi- 
dent,  508. 

Bering  Strait,  width  of,   22. 

Berkeley,  Governor  William, 
171,   194. 

Bernaldez,  Andres,  115. 

Bimini,  island  of,  69. 

Bingham,  Mrs.,  309. 

Bingham,   William,   406. 

Birkbeck,  Captain  Morris,  393. 

Birney,  James  G.,  candidate 
for  Presidency,  453,  466. 

"Black  Sally,"  331. 

Blaine,  James  G.,  in  Congress, 
548;  as  Speaker  of  the  House, 
574;  candidate  for  Presidency, 
587;  declined  a  second  nomi- 
nation, 591. 

Blair,  Jr.,  General  Francis  P., 
candidate  for  Vice-president, 
562. 

"Bland  act,"  582. 

Bland,  Richard  P.,  582. 

Blaxton,  William,  195. 

Block,  Adrian,  144, 


6l3 


INDEX 


Bombazen,  an  Indian  chief,  166. 

Bonaparte,  Napoleon,  his  de- 
crees, 339,  347;  Federalist  ser- 
mon against,  351;  also,   360, 

563- 

Boone,  Daniel,  402. 

Boston,  settlement  of,  153; 
evacuation  of,  250. 

Bourbourg,  Brasseur  de,  17. 

Bout  well,  George  S.,  548. 

Bowdoin,  Governor  James,  300. 

Bowling-alley  built  by  a  clergy- 
man,  188. 

Braddock,  General  Edward,  181. 

Bradford,  Governor  William, 
145,   148,   151,   187. 

Bradley,  Judge  Joseph  P.,  576. 

Bradley,  Thomas,  80. 

Bradstreet,  Governor  Simon, 
183,    214. 

Bragg,  General  Braxton,  520, 
521,   528. 

Brazil,  74. 

Brebeuf,  Pere,   117. 

Breck,  Samuel,  quoted,  405, 
406,  414. 

Breckinridge,  John  C,  candi- 
date for  Vice-president,  501; 
his  election,  502 ;  candidate 
for  President,  508. 

Breedon,  Captain  Thomas,  210. 

Brehan,  Madame  de,   299,  300. 

Breton  fishermen,  the,  83,  113. 

Brewster,  Elder  William,  151, 
187. 

Brissot  de  Warville,  J.  P.,  300. 

Bristow,    Benjamin    H.,    574. 

British,  plans  of,  in  Revolu- 
tionary War,  273. 

British  yoke,  the,  209. 

Bromfield,  Henry,  332. 

Brooks,  C.  W.,  21. 

Brooks,  Rev.  C.  T.,  42. 

Brown,  John,  led  attack  on 
Harper's  Ferry,  505;  hanged, 
506. 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  219. 

Bryan,  William  J.,  nominated 
for  President,  602,  609. 

Bryant,  W.  C,  182,  380. 

Buccaneers,  88,  96,   100. 

Buchanan,     James,     candidate 

6 


for  Presidency ,  501;  his  elec- 
tion, 502  ;  helpless  in  hands  of 
slavery  advocates,  507. 

Bull  Run,  515,  522. 

Bumstead,  Jeremiah,   166,   167. 

Bunker  Hill,  battle  of,  245,  246. 

Burchard,  Rev.  Mr.,  587. 

Burgoyne,    General    John,    243, 

273,   274- 
Burke,  Edmund,  276,  291,  322. 
Burns,  Anthony,  trial  of,  487. 
Burnside,  General,   522. 
Burr,  Aaron,  329,  339. 
Burras,  Anne,  140. 
Butler,    General    Benjamin    F., 

Butler,  Senator,   499. 
Buttrick,  Major,  236. 

Cabeca  de  Vaca.  (See  Nunez, 
Alvar.) 

Cabinet  of  Washington,  300. 

Cabot,  George,  352. 

Cabot,  J.  E.,  46. 

Cabot,  John,  75,  78,  80,  81. 

Cabot,  Sebastian,  75,  78,  80,  81, 
82. 

Cabot,  Zuan   (John),   79. 

Cabots,  the,  76,  100,  112. 

Cacafuego,  the,  captured  by 
Drake,  91. 

Calhoun,  John  C,  his  opinions, 
377,  382;  Vice-president,  404, 
420,  427,  428;  quoted,  429; 
great  speech  of,  479;  death 
of,  480. 

Calhoun,  Miss,  404. 

Calhoun,  Mrs.,  427. 

California,  visited  by  Drake,  93; 
ceded  to  the  United  States, 
473;  discovery  of  gold  in,  477  ; 
admitted  into  the  Union,  479. 

Calvert,  George  (Lord  Balti- 
more),  156. 

Calvert,  Governor  Leonard,  156. 

Cambridge,  Mass.,  settled,  152; 
"Tory  Row"  in,  228. 

Canada,  derivation  of  word, 
107;  attacks  on,  178;  surren- 
der of,  by  France,  183,  231 ;  in- 
fluence of  this  surrender,  219; 
invasions  of,  251,  372. 

13 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Canals,  introduction  of,  401. 
Candidates,  nomination  of,  409. 
Canning,  George,  322,  382. 
Carleton,  Sir  Guy,  279. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  quoted,  144. 
Carolina,    settlement    of,     204; 

division  of,  205;  introduction 

of  slavery  in,  435. 
Carr,  Lucien,    168. 
Carroll,   Mr.,   357. 
Carter,  James,  80. 
Carthagena  captured  by  Drake, 

97- 
Cartier,  J.,   105,   107,   108,   113, 

123. 
Cartwright,     Colonel     Thomas, 

210,  an. 
Carver,  Jonathan,  151. 
Cass,  Lewis,  474,  475. 
Castin,  St.,  175. 
Cathay,   107. 
Catholic  and  Huguenot  clergy, 

US- 
Cavendish,  Thomas,  99. 

Centennial  .Exhibition,  580. 

Cerro  Gordo,  472. 

Cervera,  Admiral,  605. 

Chambersburg  burned,  528. 

Champigny,  M.,   176. 

Champlain,  Samuel  de,  his 
journals,  121;  his  musketry, 
125;  his  campaign  with  the 
Iroquois,  126;  also,  133,  134, 
143,  163,  173,  175,  202. 

Champlin,   Miss,   278. 

Chapultepec,  heights  of,  472. 

Charlemagne,  Emperor,  27. 

Charles  I.,   139. 

Charles  II.,  170,  204,  205,  209. 

Charlesfort,  near  Beaufort,  S. 
C,   no. 

Charleston,  S.  C,  252. 

Charlestown,  Mass.,  settled,  153. 

Charlevoix,  P.  F.  X.,  175. 

Charlotte,  Queen,  325. 

Charter  of  Virginia,  134;  of 
Maryland,  155;  of  Connecti- 
cut, 212;  of  Massachusetts, 
214;  colonial  charters  an- 
nulled,  214. 

Chase,  Chief-justice,  558. 

Chastellux,  Marquis  de,  310,311. 


Chatham,  Earl  of,  221,  276. 
Chesapeake,  the,  339. 
Chesterton,    England,    mill    at, 

42. 
Chicago,  111.,  369,  393,  395. 
Chichen-Itza,  20. 
Chickamauga  Creek,  528. 
Choate,  Rufus,  483. 
Choiseul,   Due  de,  231. 
Cholula,  pyramid  of,   13. 
Chopunish  Indians,   n. 
Christiana,  Del.,  foundation  of, 

i57- 

Christina,  Queen,   157. 

Christopher,  St.,  56. 

Church,  Captain  Benjamin,  165, 
170. 

Churubusco,  battle  of,  472. 

Cicero,   188. 

Cincinnati,  O.,  369. 

Circleville,  O.,   15. 

Circumnavigation  of  globe  by 
Drake,  94;  by  Cavendish,  99. 

Civil  offices,  tenure  of  service  in, 
381;  appointments  to,  421; 
also,  307,  308,  334,  409. 

Civil  Rights  bill,  558. 

Civil  service  commission,  568. 
586. 

Civil  service  reform,  570,  571, 
583,  586,  587,  591. 

Civil  war,  outbreak  of,  514; 
Fort  Sumter,  514;  Bull  Run, 
515,  522;  Wilson's  Creek, 
517;  Fort  Henry  and  Fort 
Donelson,  519;  occupation 
of  Nashville,  520;  Vicksburg, 
Murfreesborough,  and  Fair 
Oaks,  521;  Antietam,  Fred- 
ericksburg, and  Hampton 
Roads,  522;  Chancellorsville 
and  Gettysburg,  526;  Vicks- 
burg, 527 ;  Chickamauga  Creek 
and  the  battle  of  the  Wilder- 
ness, 528;  Sherman  at  Atlanta, 
529;  Lee's  surrender  at  Ap- 
pomattox Court-House,  532; 
cost  of,  533,  534,  537,  538. 

Clark,  General  William,  334. 

Clavigero,  Francisco,  10. 

Clay,  Henry,  Federalist,  371; 
candidate  for  Presidency,  407, 


614 


INDEX 


408,  430,  465;  compromise 
tariff  of,  429;  quotation  from, 
438;  also,  346,  373,  378,  418, 
419,  461,  478,  479- 

Clayton  -  Bulwer  treaty,  485, 
608. 

Cleveland,  Grover,  nominated 
for  President,  587,  590,  595; 
his  election,  588,  596;  his  first 
administration,  588-590;  fi- 
nancial conditions  during  his 
second  term,  597,  598;  and 
the  Venezuela  boundary  dis- 
pute,  599,   600. 

Clinton,  De  Witt,  355,  401. 

Clinton,  George,  338,  341- 

Clinton,  Sir  Henry,  242. 

Cobbett,  William,  348. 

Coffin,  Levi,  488. 

Colden,  Governor  Cadwallader, 

!73- 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  70. 

Colfax,  Schuyler,  candidate  for 
Vice-president,  561;  his  elec- 
tion, 562. 

Collingwood,   Lord,   348. 

Colonies,  French  Protestant, 
109,  no,  in,  112;  Lane's, 
Grenville's,  White's,  130;  Gos- 
nold's,  133;  Popham's,  134, 
147;  Virginia,  134,  138;  Dutch 
143;  Plymouth,  145;  Massa- 
chusetts ,  152;  Connecticut , 
155,  158,  159;  Calvert's,  156; 
Swedish,  157;  Penn's,  205; 
union  of,   214. 

Colorado  organized  as  a  terri- 
tory,  511. 

Columbus,  Christopher,  his  voy- 
age as  compared  with  that  of 
the  Northmen,  49;  his  train- 
ing, 50;  his  reasonings,  51; 
his  voyage,  53;  his  delusions, 
54;  landfall,  59;  his  treat- 
ment of  natives,  60;  his 
influence  on  the  Cabots,  76; 
also,  62,  63,  68,  72,  75,  80,  84, 
105,   115. 

Columbus,  Ferdinand,  53. 

Commerce,  ruin  of  American, 
339,  354;  Jefferson's  opposi- 
tion to,  340,  354. 

6 


Commissioners,    royal,    in    Bos- 
ton,  210. 
Comogre,  66. 
Conant,   Roger,   152. 
Confederacy,  214,  510,  532,  535, 

53°,   54i. 

Confederation,  experiments  at, 
215;  formation  and  failure  of, 
283. 

Congress,  Continental,  records 
of,  253;  discussions  in,  261, 
262,  268;  early  resolutions  of, 
267 ;  a  single  house,  284;  man- 
ners in,  346. 

Conkling,  Roscoe,  548,  585. 

Connecticut,  colonies  of,  155; 
education  in,  193;  witchcraft 
in,  200;  charter  of,  212;  Conti- 
nental troops  in,   279. 

Constellation,  the  frigate,  327. 

Constitution,  discussion  and 
formation  of,    291. 

Constitution  and  Guerriere,  bat- 
tle of,  355. 

Continental  Congress.  (bee 
Congress.) 

Contreras,  battle  of,  472. 

Cooper,  J.  Fenimore,  380,  402. 

Copper-mines,  early  Indian,  122. 

Cornwallis,  Earl  of,  272,  279. 

Coronado,  Francisco  de,  9. 

Cortez,  Hernando  de,  9,  10,  17, 
69,   70. 

Costume,  changes  of,  331. 

Cotton,  increased  demand  for, 
440;  trade  destroyed,  525. 

Cotton-gin,  invention  of  the, 
439. 

Coverley,  Sir  Roger  de,  an 
American,  332. 

"  Coxey's  army,"  598. 

Crandall,  Prudence,  persecuted, 
449. 

Crawford,  William  H.,  370,  378, 
382,  407,  408,  418,  422. 

Creasy,  Sir  Edward,  274. 

Creek  Indians,  n. 

Croatoan,    131. 

Cromwell,  Oliver,   208. 

Cromwell,  Richard,  209. 

Cuba,  situation  in,  603;  revolts 
in,  604;  independence  of,  rec- 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 


ognized    by    United     States, 

605. 
Cudraigny,  an  Indian  god,  108. 
Cullenden,  Rose,  200. 
"Cumberland  Road"  bill,  384. 
Curtis,  Benjamin  R.,  558. 
Custis,  Nelly,  314. 
Cutler,  Dr.  Manasseh,  299. 
Cutts,  Mrs.,  358. 

Dakota  organized  as  a  Terri- 
tory,  511. 

Dane,  Nathan,   293. 

Danes,  the,  ^^. 

Darby,  William,  393,  394. 

Dare,  Ananias,    131. 

Dare,  Virginia,   132. 

Darien,  66. 

Darwin,  Charles,  4,   19. 

DAvezac,  M.,  75. 

Davis,  Captain  Isaac,  236. 

Davis,  Isaac  P.,  354. 

Davis,  Jefferson,  chosen  presi- 
dent of  Confederate  States, 
510;  calls  for  volunteers,  516; 
suspends  privilege  of  habeas 
corpus,  525;  former  seat  oc- 
cupied by  black  man,  567. 

Davis,  John,  329. 

Davis,  Judge  David,  576. 

Dawes,  Henry  L.,  548. 

Dayton,  William  L.,  candidate 
for  Vice-president,  501. 

Deane,  Charles,   75,   211. 

De   Bry's  imaginary  monsters, 

t.  55" 

Decatur,    Commodore   Stephen, 

34i. 

Declaration  of  Independence, 
263,  264,  267. 

Deerfield,  Mass.,  massacre  at, 
178. 

Delaware,  Lord,  142,  157. 

Delaware  settled,  157,  158; 
connection  with  Pennsyl- 
vania, 205,  218. 

Delft  Haven,  146. 

Democratic  party,  first  called 
Republican,  323;  triumph  of, 
329;  material  of,  335;  long  in 
power,  343;  change  in  doc- 
trines of,  361. 

61 


Dennie,  T.  G.,  his  Portfolio,  328; 

his  attack  on  Jefferson,  330. 
Denonville,  M.,  176. 
Dewey,  Commodore  George,  in 
command    of   Asiatic   squad- 
ron, 605. 
Dexter,   F.    B.,    195. 
Diaz,  Bernal,  10,  104. 
Dickens,  Charles,  298. 
Dickinson,   John,    quoted,    218; 
speech    of,     259,     260;    also, 
256,  258,  261,  265. 
Digliton  Rock,  the,  41. 
Diman,  Professor,  195. 
Dodge,   Senator,  491. 
Donelson,   Mrs.,  427. 
Doniphan,   Colonel,  471. 
Dorchester,  Mass.,  settled,  153. 
Dorchester  Company,  the,  152. 
Douglas,  Stephen  A.,  492,  493, 

,  494,  505,  5°7.  5°8. 

Downing,  Jack,"  414. 
Downing,  Sir  George,  185. 
Draft  riots,   530. 
Drake,     Sir     Francis,     88,     89, 

91,  92,  94,  95,  96,  98,  99,  100, 

130. 
Ducket,   Lionel,  84. 
Duelling  at  Washington,  346. 
Duny,   Anne,   200. 
Dustin,   Hannah,   165. 
Dutch  in  America,  the,  144,  158, 

203,   204. 
Dutch  West  India  Company,  144. 
D wight,  Rev.  Timothy,  378. 

Earle,  Thomas,  candidate  for 
Vice-president,  453. 

"Eastward,   Ho!"  quoted,    137. 

Eaton,  Mrs.,  426. 

Edmunds,   George  F.,   548. 

Education  in  the  colonies,  193, 
194. 

Edwards,  Dr.  Enoch,  268. 

El  Dorado,    10 1. 

"Elephant  Mound,"  the,  23. 

"  Elephant  pipe,"  the,  23. 

Eliot,  Rev.  John,  119,  186,  187, 
242. 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  Raleigh's  trib- 
ute to,  103;  also,  84,  87,  88, 
93.    i°3- 

6 


INDEX 


Ellery,    William,    quoted,     268; 

also,   272,  293. 
Ellis,    Dr.    George    E.,    quoted, 

119,  162,  166. 
Embargo,    the,     349;    Bryant's 

poem  against,  ibid. 
Emerson,  Rev.  William,  quoted, 

246,   247. 
Emerson,  R.  W.,  quoted,  367. 
Endicott,  John,    152,    153,    154, 

187,   210. 
England.     (See  Great  Britain.) 
English  nation,  an,  predicted  by 

Raleigh,   129. 
Englishmen  in  America,  second 

generation  of,   184. 
Ericsson,  John,   523. 
Erie  Canal,  444. 
Erik  the  Red,  35,  40. 
Eskimo,   21. 

Eustis,  Dr.  William,  237. 
Evarts,  William  M.,  558. 
Everett,    Dr.    William,    quoted, 

44. 
Everett,  Edward,  379,  380,  381, 

508. 
Ewaiponima,  an  imaginary  race, 

102. 
Excommunication    of    Fletcher 

by  Drake,   97. 

Fair  Oaks,  521. 
Farmers'  Alliance,   595. 
Farragut,    Admiral    David    G., 

52°>   529- 
Fauchet,  Baron,  318. 
Federalists,    their   decline,    338, 

346;  their  inconsistency,  349; 

their  defence  of  the  right  of 

search,   350;  partisanship   of, 

351;  their  provocations,  353. 
Ferdinand,   King  of  Spain,   53, 

59,  61,  76. 
Fernow,  Berthold,   144- 
Fersen,  Count,  321. 
Fessenden,  William  Pitt,  548. 
Fielding,  Henry,  253. 
Fifteenth  Amendment,  564,  566. 
Fillmore,  Millard,  candidate  for 

President,   501. 
Finance,  American,  established 

by  Hamilton,   306. 

40  6 


"First"  and  "Second"  Vir- 
ginia colonies,   134. 

Flag,  the  American,  278. 

Fletcher,  Rev.  Francis,  90,  97. 

Flint,  Timothy,  394,  400. 

Flora,  American,  transformed. 
209. 

Florida,  mounds  of,  15;  origin 
of  name  of,  69;  purchase  of, 
372;  passed  ordinance  of  seces- 
sion,  510. 

Floyd,  John,  430. 

Foote,  Commodore,  519. 

Ford's  Theatre,  Lincoln  shot  in, 

533- 
Forrest,   Mrs.,    140. 
Fort  Caroline,  Florida,  no. 
Fort  Fisher,  fall  of,  530. 
Fort  Moultrie,  defence  of,  251. 
Foster,   J.    W.,   cited,    13. 
Fountain   of  Youth,  search  for 

the,  68. 
Fourteenth     Amendment,     the. 

55o,  55i.  552,  560,  566. 
Fox,  Captain,  59. 
Fox,  Charles  James,  276. 
France,  policy  of,  towards  Ind- 
ians,    116,     124;     discoveries 
of,     175;     activity     of,     181; 
claims  surrendered,  183;  first 
treaty  with,  275;  army  of,  in 
America,  277;  influence  of,  on 
America,  314,  320;    X,    Y,   Z 
negotiations,  326. 
Francis  I.,    105. 

Franklin,      Benjamin,      quoted, 
232,  266,  291;  letter  to,  282: 
his  political  theory,  291;  also, 
217,  253,  256,  259,   263,   264, 
275,  286,  292,  439. 
Franks,  Rebecca,  309,  310. 
Freedman,  Edward  A.,  518. 
"Freedmen,"    negro,    545,    547 » 

548. 
Freedmen 's    Bureau    bill,    545, 

548,   551. 
Freedom,  religious,  in  Rhode  Isl- 
and and  Maryland,  191. 
Free-Soil  Democrats,  491. 
Fremont,  John  C,  in  the  Mexi- 
can War,  471;  candidate  for 
President,  501. 

17 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED     STATES 


French   and    Indian   wars,    124, 

I25- 

French  Revolution,  influence  of, 
upon  Americans,  314,  315;  in- 
fluence of,  on  party  lines,  320. 

Freneau,  Philip,  315,  378. 

Freydis,  a  Norse  woman,  39. 

Frobisher,  Captain  Martin,  9^, 
96. 

Frontenac,  Comte  dc,  116,  177. 

Frost,   Mr.,    224. 

Frothingham,  Richard,  quoted, 

,  234;  also,   245,   257. 

Fugitive  -  Slave  law,  482,  485, 
489,  490,  491,  500. 

Fugitive  slaves,  487,  488,  523. 

Fulton,   Robert,   400. 

Gadsden  Purchase,  the,  473. 

Gage,  General  Thomas,  244. 

Gaines,  General,  460. 

Gallatin,  Albert,  322,  354,  370, 
416. 

Garfield,  James  A.,  member  of 
the  House,  548;  nominated 
for  President,  583;  his  elec- 
tion, 584;  shooting  and  death 

„  of,   585. 

Gamier,  Pere,  117. 

Garrison,  W.  L.,  433,  444,  445, 

447.  449.  45°- 

Gates,  General  Horatio,  274. 

Genet,  E.  C,  316,  318. 

Geneva  Tribunal,  the,  568. 

George  III.,  King,  276. 

Georgia,  mounds  of,  15;  Con- 
tinental troops  of,  280;  passed 
ordinance  of  secession,  510. 

Germantown,  Pa.,  battle  of,  274. 

Gerry,  Elbridge,  266.  287,  291, 

/A  3o8    355. 

Gettysburg,  battle  of,  526; 
Lincoln's  address  at,  527. 

Giddings,  Joshua  R.,  452. 

Gilbert,   Raleigh,    134. 

Gilbert,  Sir  Humphrey,  94. 

Gilman,  D.  C,  cited,  370,  382. 

Gleig,   Rev.  G.   R.,  344. 

Globe  of  Schoner,  63,  64,  65. 

Gomara,  F.   L.  de,   10,  80. 

Goodrich,   A.,  61. 

Goodrich,  James,  speech  of,  369.  I 

61 


Goodrich,  S.  G.,  cited,  380. 
Gorges,  Sir  F.,    134,    335. 
Gorsuch  shot,   486. 
Gorton,   Samuel,    191. 
Gosnold,  Bartholomew,  132,133, 

138,    140,    146. 
Gougou,  an  Indian  monster,  123, 

202. 
Gourgues,  Dominique  de,  112. 
Gouverneur,  Mrs.,  376. 
"  Governor  Shirley's  War,"  180. 
Graham,  William  A.,  candidate 

for  Vice-president,  491. 
Grant,    General   Ulysses   S.,   in- 
vaded  Confederate   territory. 
519;  at  Vicksburg,   521,   527; 
moved     to    Thomas's    relief, 
528;  Lee's  surrender  to,  532; 
appointed  Secretary  of  War, 
555;   his   nomination   for   the 
Presidency,  561;  his  election, 
562,  570;  and  the  restoration 
of  the  Southern   States,    563; 
conditions  of  the  South  dur- 
ing his  first   term,   564,    565; 
not   a  great   statesman,   567; 
has   "expansion"   fever,  568; 
his  administration  denounced, 
569;   his    second    administra- 
tion, 571,  572;  before  the  Re- 
publican convention  for  third 
term,   583. 
Grant,  Mrs.,  of  Laggan,   228. 
Gravier,   M.,   46. 
Gray,   Dr.  Asa,   22. 
Great  Britain,  explorations  from, 
74;   seamen   of,    83;   wars   of. 
with  Spain,  87;  her  claims  of 
discovery,  94;    early   colonies 
of,  130;  her  wars  with  France, 
160;  with  Indians,   164;    love 
of  colonists  for,  208;  love  of, 
changed  into  hatred,  209;  ag- 
gressions of,  210;  official  igno- 
rance in,  215;  feeling  in,  tow- 
ards colonies,-  ibid.;  outbreak 
of  war  with,  232;  peace  negoti- 
ations with,  279;  Jay's  treaty 
with,  317;  new  aggressions  of. 
339;    second   war   with,    343: 
treaty    of    Ghent    with,    359; 
slavery     abolished     in,     448; 

8 


INDEX 


claims  against,  568;  and  the 
Venezuela  boundary  dispute, 
599,  600;  friendly  attitude  of, 
towards  United  States,  605. 

Greeley,  Horace,  569;  candidate 
for  President,  570;  death  of, 
ibid. 

Greene,  General  Nathanael,  271, 
279. 

Greene,  George  W.,    105. 

Greenland,  35,  43.  45 >  48,  49- 

Grenville,  Sir  Richard,   130. 

Grimalfson,   Bjarni,   29. 

Griswold,  R.  W.,  310. 

Grundy,  Lewis,  346,  347. 

Guadalupe  Hidalgo,  treaty  of, 
472. 

Guam,  606. 

Guiana,    roi. 

Gun-boats,  Jefferson's,  339,  35 4. 

Gutierrez,  Pedro,  58. 

Hackit,  Thomas,  109. 

Hague  Conference,  the,  608. 

Hakluyt,  Richard,  84,  94,  105, 
130. 

Hale,  John  P.,  367;  candidate 
for  President,  475,  49 1- 

Hale,  Sir  Matthew,  quoted,  200. 

Hall,  Bishop,  quoted,  146,  200. 

Halleck,  F.  G.,  quoted,  374- 

Halleck,  General,  522. 

Hallowell,  R.  P.,  197 

Hamilton.  Alexander,  financial 
achievements  of,  306;  quoted, 
318;  his  quarrel  with  Adams, 
329;  death  of,  338;  also,  299, 

3°3,  304,  3°5-  312.  3l6>  32°. 
326,  327.  329,  334,  338,  344, 

364- 

Hamilton,   Mrs.,  300. 

Hamlin,  Hannibal,  candidate 
for  Vice-president,  508;  his 
election,   509. 

Hancock,  John,  quoted,  266; 
letter  to,"  272;  also,  243,  248, 
266. 

Hancock,  Winfield  S.,  candi- 
date for  President,  584. 

II anna,  Senator  Marcus  A.,  601. 

Hannibal,   68. 

Harald.   King,    28,   33. 

6 


Harper's  Ferry,  midnight  at- 
tack on,  505. 

Harris,  Captain,   244. 

Harrison,  Benjamin,  quoted, 
266;  his  election  as  President, 
591;  his  administration,  592, 
593,  594;  his  second  nomina- 
tion to  the  Presidency,  595. 

Harrison,  General  W.  H.,  his 
victories  in  the  Northwest, 
356;  candidate  for  President, 
456,  461 ;  his  election  and 
death,  462. 

Harrisse,   H.,   59. 

Hartford  Convention,  the,  352. 

Hartop,  Job,    101,    135. 

Harvard,  Rev.  John,  186. 

Haven,  S.  F.,  quoted,  21. 

Hawkes,  Henry,   10 1. 

Hawkins,  Sir  John,  84,  85,  86, 
87,  88,  94,  100,  101,  in. 

Hawthorne,  N.,  quoted,  184; 
also,  180,  380. 

Hay,  Mrs.,  376. 

Hay-Pauncefote  treaty,  608. 

Hayes,  Rutherford  B.,  mem- 
ber of  the  House,  548;  nomi- 
nated for  President,  574; 
declared  elected,  576;  his 
administration,  578,  582. 

Hazard,  Isaac  Peace,  226. 

Hazard,  Robert,  226. 

Heath,  General  Benjamin,  238. 

"Heimskringla,"  the,  quoted. 
28. 

Helluland,  36,  47. 

Helper's,  Hinton  R.,  Impending 
Crisis,   509. 

Hendricks,  Thomas  A.,  570. 

Henrietta  Maria,  Queen,  156. 

Henry,   Miss,  403. 

Henry,  Patrick,  221,  222,  287, 
291. 

Henry  IV.  (of  France),  120. 

Henry  VI.   (of  England),  86. 

Henry  VII.  (of  England),  76,  78, 
o,   83. 


Heriulf,   35,   36. 
T.  A., 
58,  69. 


Herrera, 


quoted,  56,  57 


Higginson,  Rev.  Francis, quoted, 
152,  153,  154,  189;  also,  187. 


IQ 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Hochelaga  (Montreal),  107,  108. 
Hoist,   Dr.  Von,   287. 
Homer,   186,    188. 
Hood,  General  John  B.,  529. 
Hooke,    Rev.    William,    quoted, 

208,   222. 
Hooker,    "Fighting    Joe,"    =526, 

528. 
Hooker,  Rev.  Thomas,  quoted, 

213;  also,  187. 
H6p,  38,  45. 
Hopkins,  Stephen,   220. 
Hopkinson,  Francis,  254. 
Horace,   186. 
Howe,    Sir    William,    242,    245, 

268,   269,   272. 
Howell,  James,  45,  200. 
Howells,  W.  D.,  552. 
Hubbard,  Rev.  William,   168. 
Hudson,  Henry,  136,  143,  144. 
Huguenot  colonies,  French,  109, 

no,    in,    112. 
Hull,  Commodore  Isaac,  377. 
Hull,  General  William,  355. 
Hulsemann  letter,  the,  484. 
Humboldt,  Alexander  von,   55, 

59- 
Humphreys,  David,  378. 
Hundred  Years'  War,  the,  160. 
Hutchinson,  Governor  Thomas, 

quoted,   152,  248. 
Hutchinson,  Mrs.  Anne,   191. 

Iceland,  Northmen  in,  35;  vis- 
ited by  Columbus,  51;  also, 
47,  48,  49.   SI- 

Ignorance  of  English  officials, 
2I5- 

Illinois  admitted  as  a  State,  372  ; 
unsettled,    387,    396;    settled. 

Independence,  American,  dawn-  I 

ing   of,    232;    war    for,    ibid.;1 

early  feeling  about,  254,  25s; 

second    war    for,    343.      (See 

Revolutionary  War.) 
Indian  slavery,  experiments  in, 

435- 
Indiana    admitted    as    a    State, 

372;   unsettled,    396;    settled, 

397 
Indians.   American,   families  of. 


4;  mounds  built  by,  15;  ill- 
treatment  of,  106;  their  super- 
stitions, 124;  warfare  of,  in- 
fluenced by  English,  124,  125. 
165;  found  gentle  by  first 
explorers,  160;  how  treated 
by  English,  161,  170;  by 
French  and  Spanish,  114,  174; 
purchases  from,  161;  senti- 
ments of  Puritans  towards, 
163,  167;  influence  of  their 
warfare  on  that  of  the  colo- 
nists, 165;  how  treated  by  the 
Dutch,  172;  position  of  women 
among,  168;  women  at  first  re- 
spected by,  170;  outbreak  of , 
encouraged  by  the  French, 
177;  converted  by  Rasle,  179; 
their  opinion  of  the  colonists, 
181;  later  wars  with,  313. 

Institutions,  American,  origin 
of,    206. 

Interglacial  period,  man  in,  23. 

Internal  improvements,  384, 
386,  390,   398,  401. 

International  tribunals,  600. 

Intolerance  in  Maryland,  192; 
in  Virginia,  195;  in  Massa- 
chusetts,  196. 

Iroquois  Indians,  n,  12,  124. 
126,175.      (See  Indians.) 

Irving,  Washington,  59,  380,  381. 

Isabella,  Queen,  52,  59,  76. 

Italy,  influence  of,  on  American 
discovery,    74,   75. 

Jackson,  Andrew,  his  charac- 
ter, 412,  413;  causes  of  his 
popularity,  413;  Webster's 
fears  of,  414;  popular  views 
of,  415;  early  career  of,  416 
"reign"  of,  417;  first  election 
of,  420;  Jefferson's  distrust 
of,  421;  political  changes 
made  by,  ibid.;  Sullivan's 
opinion  of,  422;  inauguration 
of,  424;  manners  of,  ibid.; 
his  contest  with  Washington 
ladies,  426,  427;  his  dealing 
with  nullification,  429;  his 
re-election,  430;  his  contest 
with  the  United  States  Bank, 


620 


INDEX 


431,  443;  also,  228,  376,  450, 

455- 
Jackson,   Dr.  W.   H.,  6. 
Jackson,  Mrs.  Helen,  description 

of  pueblo  by,  8. 
Jackson,       "Stonewall,"       521; 

death  of,   526. 
James  II.,    176. 
Japanese    and   American    flora, 

22;  junks  crossing  the  Pacific, 

21,     22. 

Jasper,  Sergeant,   252. 

Jay,   Chief- justice  John,  treaty 

°f.  3*3'  3I7'  also.  3T°.  32°> 
326,  329,  338,  344. 

Jay,  Mrs.  John,  300. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  funeral  of, 
224;  his  election  as  Vice- 
president,  319;  his  feeling  as 
to  the  French  Revolution,  321, 
322;  his  election  as  President, 
329;  his  inauguration,  ibid.; 
attack  on,  in  Portfolio,  330; 
charges  against,  ibid.;  his 
housekeeping,  ^t,^;  his  re- 
election, 338;  his  view  of 
townships,  340;  his  character, 
341;  his  friendship  with 
Adams,  342 ;  his  successors, 
343;  his  aversion  to  com- 
merce, 353. 

Jeffrey,  Lord,   380. 

Jemison,  Mary,  170. 

Jesuit  missions,  113,   117,  119. 

Johnson,  Andrew,  appointed 
military  governor,  520;  his 
election  as  Vice-president, 
531;  succeeds  to  Presidency, 
546;  his  dispute  with  Con- 
gress, 549,  550,  552,  553, 
554.  555.  561;  impeachment 
°*  557.  558;  charges  not 
sustained,  559;  ceases  to  op- 
pose Congress,  560;  un- 
popularity of,  561;  successes 
in  diplomacy  of,  563. 

Johnson,  Richard  M.,  chosen 
by  Senate  as  Vice-president, 

457- 
Johnson,  William,  414. 
Johnston,    General    Joseph    E., 

5*5.  527.  529.  532.  535- 

6 


Johnston,   Lady.      (See  Franks, 

Rebecca.) 
Jones,  Captain  Paul,  278. 
Juvenal,   186. 

Kalm,  Peter,  216. 

Kansas,  organized  as  a  Territory, 
492,  493,  495;  emigration  to, 
496;  slavery  riots  in,  497;  ad- 
mitted to  the  Union,  498,  511. 

Kansas- Nebraska  act,  492,  493, 

494,  497.  499,   5QI- 
Karlsefne,  38,  40. 
Kearney,  General,  471. 
Kelley,  William  D.,   548. 
Kendall,  Amos,  431,  450. 
Kendall,  John,    138. 
Kenton,  Simon,  402. 
Kentucky,  resolutions  of  1799, 

328;  admitted  as  a  State,  337; 

early   life    in,    313,    402;    oc- 
cupied by  Union  forces,  517. 
Kialarness,  38. 
Kieft,     Governor    Jacob,     157, 

172. 
King,  Clarence,  395. 
King,  Rufus,  293,  338,  362,  365. 
King,  William  R.,   his  election 

as  Vice-president,  491. 
"King    Henry    VI.,"    play    of, 

quoted,  86. 
King  Philip's  War,  169. 
King  William's  War,   175. 
Kinglake,  A.  W.,  244. 
King's  arms,  tearing  down   of, 

268. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  89. 
Kinney,   Mr.,   50. 
Kirke,  Colonel,   212. 
Klondike,  discovery  of  gold  in, 

608. 
"  Know- Nothing "    party,    birth 

of,   500. 
Knox,     General,     letters    from, 

285;  also,  289,  298,  299,  314, 

3J9.  375- 
Knox,   Mrs.   General,   297,   298, 

300,  309. 
Kohl,  J.  G.,   75,   136. 
Kortwright,  Miss,  375. 
Kossuth,  484,  485. 
Krossaness,   38. 


HISTORY    OF    THE     UNITED    STATES 


Krudencr,   Baron,  427. 

Kuhn,   Dr.,   406. 

"Ku  Klux  act,"  566. 

Ku  Klux   Klan,   secret  society, 

Lafayette,    G.    M.    de     (Mar- 
quis), 270,   274,  275,  322. 
La  Hontan,  Baron,  quoted,  163, 

i75.   177- 

Landa,  D.  de,  Maya  alphabet  of, 
17,  18. 

Lane,  Joseph,  candidate  for 
Vice-president,  508. 

Lane,  Ralph,  130. 

Langbourne,  Major,   230. 

Lapham,   I.  A.,  cited,   23. 

La  Roche,   De,   113. 

La  Salle,  Robert  C.  de,  174. 

Las  Casas,  Bishop  de,  his  pro- 
test against  cruelty,  72;  also, 

Laudonniere,  Rene  de,  87,  no. 

Lauzun,  Due  de,  277,  322. 

Lawrence,  Captain  James,  356. 

Lawyers,  rise  of,  in  the  colonies, 
228. 

Laydon,  John,    140. 

League  of  four  colonies,   169. 

Le  Caron,   Pere,    115. 

Lee,  Ann,    191. 

Lee,  Colonel  Robert  E.,  at 
Harper's  Ferry,  505;  at  Fair 
Oaks,  521;  at  Cold  Harbor, 
528;  surrender  of,  532,  535. 

Lee,  General  Charles,  247. 

Lee,  Richard  Henry,  220,  255, 
256,  291;  son  of,  255. 

Lee  family  (Marblehead,  Mass.), 
228. 

Leif  the  Lucky,  37;  his  booths, 
38. 

Leifsbudir,   37. 

Lcighton,  Caroline  C,  395. 

Leisler,  Jacob,   214. 

Le  Jeune,   Pere,    117. 

Le  Moyne,    no,    112. 

Leon,  Ponce  de,  his  voyage,  68; 
also,   135. 

Lescarbot,   118. 

Leverett,  Governor  John,  cour- 
ageous reply  of,  210. 


Lewis,  Meriwether,  334. 

Lewis,  William  B.,  418. 

Lewis  and  Clark's  expedition, 
11,  334. 

Liberator,  the,  445,  450. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  312;  his  de- 
bate with  Douglas,  505;  can- 
didate for  President,  508;  his 
election,  509,  531;  takes  oath 
of  office,  512;  calls  for  volun- 
teers, 514;  address  at  Gettys- 
burg, 527;  discussed  terms  of 
peace,  532;  death  of,  533; 
granted  amnesty,  ^42;  vetoed 
Wade-Davis  bill,  544. 

Lincoln,  Governor  Levi,  425. 

Livingston,  Cora,  404. 

Livingston,  Edward,  429. 

Livingston,  Robert  R.,  256,  263. 
294,  387- 

Livingston,  the  brothers,  220. 

Locke,  John,  his  singular  plan 
of  government,  204. 

Lodge,  H.  C,  quoted,  153. 

Lodge,  Thomas,  84. 

Longfellow,  H.  W.,  quoted,  95; 
also,   226. 

Long  Island,  battle  of,  271. 

Lorges,  Roselly  de,  6r. 

Lossing,  B.  J.,  358. 

Louis  XV.,  216. 

Louisburg,  capture  of,  180,  215. 

Louisiana,  purchase  of,  337. 
387 ;  admitted  as  a  State,  36  [ : 
passed  ordinance  of  secession, 
510;  reconstructed,    543. 

Loundes,  William  J.,  361. 

Lovejoy,  Rev.  Elijah  P.,  449. 

Love  well,  Captain  John,  166. 

Lowell,  John,  349,  352. 

Lubbock,  Sir  J.,  23. 

Lundy,  Benjamin,  445. 

Lundy's  Lane,  battle  at,  359 

Lyon,  General  Nathaniel,  517. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  194 
Macon,  Nathaniel,  334. 
McDuffie,  George,  405. 
McKean,  Thomas,  recollections 

of,  265 ;  letter  from,  ibid.;  also, 

266,  302. 
Madison,  James,  his  election  as 


62 


INDEX 


President,  341 1  his  appear- 
ance, 344;  Federalist  charges 
against,  351;  his  aversion  to 
"id.; 


war,    ibid.;    close    of    his    ad- 
ministration, 361. 
Madison,  Mrs.  James,  344.  346, 

Magellan,  Ferdinand  de,  68. 
Magnus,  King,  34. 
Mail  service,  384,  385. 
Maine,  forts  in,  177  ;  Indian  wars 
in,  179;  admitted  as  a  State, 

373-      ,       ,, 

Maine,  the,  blown  up,  604. 

Maine  Historical  Society,  47- 

Major,  R.   H.,   75. 

Malbone,  Godfrey,   228. 

Mammoth  on  ivory,   23. 

Man  in  interglacial  period,  23. 

Mandan  Indians,   11,   15. 

Manhattan  Island,   144,  l62- 

Manila  Bay,  Spanish  fleet  de- 
stroyed in,  605. 

Manning,  Cardinal,    193. 

Manufactures,  introduction  of, 
187. 

Maps  (figured),  Sigurd  Stepha- 
nius's,  47;  Da  Vinci's,  64; 
Schoner's  (globe) ,  65 ;  Cabot's, 
77;  Drake's,  93;  Ortelius's, 
104;  Smith's,  136,   141. 

•Marckland,  36,  47. 

Marietta,  O.,   15. 

Marion,  General  Francis,  252. 

Marlborough,   Duke  of,   179. 

Marquette,   Pere,    174- 

Marshall,      Chief-justice      John, 

4i4.   539- 

Marston,  John,  quoted,   137. 

Martin,  John.  138,  140. 

Martyr,  Peter.     (See  Anghiera.) 

Maryland  founded,  155;  re- 
ligious freedom  in,  157,  192; 
intolerance  in,  193;  education 
in,  194;  witchcraft  in,  201; 
old  institutions  of,  207;  man- 
ners in,  225. 

Mason,   George,   276. 

Mason,  Jeremiah,  420. 

Mason,  J.   M.,   517,   518. 

Mason,   Mr.,  367. 

Mason.   Senator,   479. 

6 


Massachusetts,  formed  by  union 
with    Plymouth,     205;    inde- 
pendent spirit  of,  210;  charter 
of,  vacated,  213;  preparations 
for  war  in,  234;    circular   of, 
committee    quoted,  238,  239; 
services     of,     in     Revolution, 
280;   Shays's  insurrection  in, 
290;    services    of,    in    war    of 
1812,  360. 
Massachusetts       Bay      Colony, 
founded,  151,152;  relations  of, 
with  Indians,   161;  toleration 
in,    189;    education     in,    193, 
194;  intolerance  in,  198. 
i  "Massachusettensis,"   233. 
j  Massasoit,    164,    167. 
:  Masts    sent    by    Massachusetts 

colony  to  England,  211. 
j  Matamoras,  468. 
j  Mather,   Rev.  Cotton,  fictitious 
letter  from,  199;  quoted,  167, 
197,   202,   203;  also,  187,  189, 
197. 
Mather,  Rev.  Increase,  quoted, 

163,   212. 
Maximilian,  Archduke,  of  Aus- 
tria,  563. 
May,  Rev.  Samuel  J.,  487. 
Mayas,  2,  4,  16,  18,  60;  alphabet 

of,  18,  19;  sculptures  of,  20. 
Mayflower,    agreement    on    the, 

149. 
McClellan,    General    George    B  , 

515-  5i7»  52I>  53°.  53i- 

McHenry,  Jerry,   486,  487. 

McKinley,  William,  chairman 
of  Ways  and  Means  Com- 
mittee, 592;  candidate  for 
President,  601;  his  election, 
603,  609;  his  policy  of  ex- 
pansion, 606;  his  death,  610. 

McLane,  John,  candidate  for 
President,   456. 

Meade,  General,   526. 

Mechanic  arts,  introduction  of, 
187. 

Medford,   Mass.,  settled,    153. 

Membertou,    119. 

Menendez,   Pedro,    in. 

Mercator's  charts,   54. 

Mercer,   General,   313. 


23 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Mermaids,   54. 

Merrimac,  the,  522,  523. 

Merry  Mount,    154. 

Merry,  Mr.,  331,  ^33- 

Mexico,  ancient,  9,  10,  13,  16; 
modern,  74;  abolished  slavery, 
458;  war  with  United  States, 
467-472;  French  in,  563. 

Miami  Indians,  the,  313. 

Michael,  Emperor,   29. 

Michigan  admitted  as  a  State, 

432- 
Mills,  Elijah  H.,  378. 
Milton,  John,  quoted,    102. 
Minnesota     admitted     to     the 

Union,   504. 
Minuit,   Peter,   144,   157,    162. 
Mississippi  passed  ordinance  of 

secession,  510. 
Missouri   admitted   as  a    State, 

373;  a  slave  State,  441. 
Missouri  Compromise,  373,  441, 

™-45i9\,49^'  i93'  4??'  5OI>  503. 

Mitchell,  Professor  Henry,  cited, 
46. 

Mobile,  Ala.,  settled,  174. 

Mohave  Indians,  11. 

Molino  del  Rey,  472. 

'Monitor,  the,  523. 

Monocrats,  the,  315. 

Monroe  doctrine,  the,  382,  458. 

Monroe,  James,  called  "James 
II."  by  Josiah  Quincy,  343; 
elected  President,  362 ;  his  rec- 
ord, 363;  importance  of  his 
tour,  ibid.;  his  fear  of  ex- 
tended territory,  366;  his 
character  and  physique,  366, 
367;  his  travels,  367,  368;  his 
policy,  371;  his  re-election  all 
but  unanimous,  ^y^;  Amer- 
ican literature  born  under 
him,  378;  the  Monroe  doc- 
trine, 382;  his  views  of  the 
post-office,  384,  385. 

Monroe,  Mrs.  James,  375. 

Montcalm,  General  de,  182, 
183- 

Monterey,  471. 

Montezuma,   4,    10. 

"Montezuma,"  a  nickname  for 
Washington,  318. 


"Montezuma's  Dinner."  Mor- 
gan's essay  on,  4. 

Montgomery,  General  James, 
251- 

Montreal  captured,   182. 

Monts,  Pierre  de,  113,  134. 

Moon,  Thomas,   90. 

Morgan,  L.  H.,  10,  12,  16,  20,  21 

Morrill,  Justin  S.,  548. 

Morris,  Gouverneur,  ^^^,  401. 

Morris,  Robert,   261. 

Morse,  John  T.,  Jr.,  quoted,  426. 

Morton,   Mrs.,   279,   311. 

Motte,  Lieutenant-colonel,  252. 

Moultrie,  General  William,  252. 

Mound-builders,  the,  2.  15; 
village  of  (figured),  14. 

Mount  Desert  first  described, 
122. 

Mount  Hope  Bay,  45,  46,  47. 

Moustier,  Comte  de,  300. 

Movement  of  centre  of  popula- 
tion since  1790,  395. 

Mullinger,  J.  B.,   187. 

Murfreesborough,  521. 

Napoleon.      (See  Bonaparte.) 

Narrowing  influence  of  colonial 
life,    189. 

Navarrete,   M.   F.  de,   59. 

Navy,  United  States,  battles  of, 
278,  327.  339.  349,  355;  first 
Secretary  of,  327. 

Nebraska,  organized  as  a  Terri- 
tory, 491-493;  no  slavery  in, 
495;  admitted  as  a  State,  554. 

Nechecolee  Indians,    12. 

Negro  suffrage,  543,  552.  554, 
561,   564,   567. 

Negroes,  as  soldiers,  523;  as 
"freedmen,"  545. 

Neill,  E.   D.,   193. 

Neutral  French,  the,  in  Acadia, 
181. 

Neuville,   M.   Hyde  de,  377. 

Neuville,  Madame  de,  377. 

Nevada  organized  as  a  Terri- 
tory,  511. 

New  Amsterdam,  founded,  144; 
nationalities  in,  145. 

New  England  Antislavery  So- 
ciety, 448. 


624 


INDEX 


New    England     Emigrant     Aid 

Society,  496. 
New  England,  first  named,  137; 

colonies  of,  their  influence  on 

reviving  Virginia  colony,  151, 

152,    187. 
Newfoundland,   origin  of  name 

of,  82. 
New    France,    Jesuits    in,    113; 

also,    104,   174. 
New    Hampshire,    settled,    166, 

177;    independence    of,     205; 

buildings  in,  223. 
Newhouse,  Sewall,  394. 
New  Jersey,  settled,  144;  inde- 
pendence of,   205;  campaigns 

in,  272. 
New    Mexico,    pueblos    of,     19; 

Indian    inscriptions    in,     43;. 

ceded  to  United  States,  473; 

organized  as  a  Territory,  479. 
New  Netherland,  name  changed, 

155;  surrender  to  English,  173, 

204. 
New    Orleans,    battle    of,    359, 

4i7- 

New    Plvmouth.       (See    Plym- 
outh.) 

Newport,   Captain  Christopher, 

138- 
Newport,  R.  I.,  old  mill  at,  41; 

French  in,  277. 
New    York    (city),    harbor    of, 

136;  first  seat  of  government, 

296;  society  in,  297,  298;  also, 

see  New  Amsterdam. 
New     York,      originally      New 

Netherland,     144,     155,     158, 

173;  governor  of,  quoted,  173; 

transferred   to   English,    204; 

revolt  of,  against  Andros,  214; 

British    army    in,    250,    251; 

population  of,  in  181 7,  369. 
Nez  Perce  Indians,   11. 
Nicaragua  ship-canal,  599,  608. 
Nicholls,  Mr.,  80. 
Nichols,  B.  R.,  388. 
Nicolls,  General,  204. 
Nixon,  John,   267. 
Nizza,  Friar  Marcos  of,  9. 
North   Carolina,    colonized,    95 ; 

divided  from  South  Carolina, 


204;  plans  a  fleet,  287;  secedes 
from  the  Union,  516. 

North,   Lord,   276. 

Northern  colonies,  condition  of 
labor  in,   229. 

Northmen,  their  lineage,  26; 
their  habits,  ibid.;  their  jew- 
elry, 27;  their  heroism,  28; 
their  ships  described,  30; 
dress  of,  33,  34;  precise  topog- 
raphy of,  unknown,  43;  no 
authentic  remains  of,  ibid. 

Northwest  Territory,   293. 

Nova  Scotia,  Northmen  in,  44. 

Noyes  Academy  "removed," 
449. 

Nunez,  Alvar  (Cabeca  de  Vaca), 
his  voyage,  69;  also,  9,  174. 

Nunez,  Vasco  (Balboa),  his  dis- 
covery of  Pacific  Ocean,  66. 

Oglethorpe,  General  James, 

218. 
Ohio  Company,  the,  293. 
Ohio,  mounds  of,  2,  15,  16,  19; 

admitted  as  a  State,  337. 
Ohio  River,  early  life  on,  399. 
Old  English  seamen,  the,  73. 
"  Old  French  War,"  the,  181. 
Old   mill   at    Newport,    41;    the 

same  at  Chesterton,  England, 

42. 
O'Neil,     Peggy.        (See    Eaton, 

Mrs.) 
Onondaga    Indians,     15.       (See 

Indians.) 
"Orders    in    Council,"    British, 

_  339,   347-  r 

Ordinance  of  1787,  293. 

Oregon,  boundary  dispute,  469, 
470;  organized  as  a  Territory, 
474;  joined  the  Union,  504. 

Ortelius,  map  of,  104. 

Osceola,   432. 

Ossoli,  Margaret  Fuller,  395. 

Otis,   C.   P.,   121. 

Otis,  H.  G.,  369. 

Otis,  James,  quoted,  215,  221, 
336. 

Otto,  M.,  285,  300. 

Ovid,    188. 

Oxenstiern.  Chancellor,   157. 


62^ 


HISTORY    OF    THE     UNITED    STATES 


Pacific  cable,  laying  of,  607. 
Pacific  Ocean,  seen  by  Balboa, 

66;  by  Drake,  89. 
Page,  John,   307. 
Paine,   Robert  Treat,  311,   327. 
Paine,  Thomas,   259,   378. 
Palfrey,  Dr.  J.  G.,  42. 
Panama,  608. 
Parish,   Rev.   Daniel,  351. 
Parker,   Captain,   236. 
Parker,   Professor  Joel,   230. 
Parkman,  Francis,  quoted,  113, 
117,  173,  190;  cited,  in,  118; 
not  quite  just  to  the  Puritans, 
190. 
Parties,    enmity   between,    351, 
352;    changes    in,    360,    371; 
disappearance  of,  418. 
Parton,  James,  263,  267,  343. 
Pasqualigo,   Lorenzo,   79. 
Peace    of    Paris,     160,     183;  of 
Ryswick,     178;     of    Utrecht, 
179. 
Pendleton,  George  H.,   562. 
Penn,  William,  his  arrival,  205; 
his  relations  with  the  Indians, 
ibid.;  also,  166,  205,  214. 
Pennsylvania,      settlement     of, 
205;    relations    of    Delaware 
with,  205,  218;  society  in,  268, 
269,  309;  campaigns  in,   273, 
274;  but  one  legislative  body 
in,   286. 
Pennsylvania    Society    for    the  I  Pliny,    186 

Abolition  of  Slavery,  438.  Plutarch,    186. 

Pentucket  (Haverhill)  attacked 

r78. 
People's  party,  the,  595. 
Pepperrell,  Sir  William,    180. 
Pequot  War,  the,   160,  168. 
Percy,   Lord,   237.   238. 
Perez,  Juan,   69. 
Perkins,  J.   H.,  403. 
Perry,  Commodore  0.  H.,  356. 
Peter  Martyr,   10,  56. 
Peter,  Mrs.,  357,  404. 
Peters,   Dr.,    196. 
Peters,  John,   228. 


ernment,     222,    308;    life    in. 
309,  310,  311;  population  of, 
in  1817,  360. 
Philip,  King  (Indian,),  death  of, 
170;  also,  160,   162,  163,  168. 

171,    172,    175,    211. 
Philip  II.  of  Spain,  84,  85,  87 

88,    100. 
Philippine  commission,  607. 
Phillips,  Wendell,  aids  abolition 

cause,  449. 
Philoponus,   54.    ' 
Phips,  Sir  William,   177,   180. 
Physique  of  Americans,  change 

in,  219. 
Pickering,  Timothy,  293,  349. 
Pierce,  Franklin,  his  election  as 

President,  491. 
Pierria,  Albert  de  la,  109. 
Pilgrims     (Plymouth),     landing 

of,  151. 
"'Pilgrims  of  St.   Mary's,"   the. 

156. 
Pinckney,  Charles  C,  306,  327, 

_  329,   33%,   34i. 
Pmkney,  William,   354. 
Pioneers,  early  frontier,  402. 
Pitcairn,  General,  235. 
Pitt,  William,  182,  232,  233. 
Pizarro,   Francisco,  67,   71. 
Plan  of  Iroquois  house,  12,  r 4. 
Plastowe,  Josias,  161. 
Piatt,  Thomas  C,  585. 


Plymouth  colony,  founded,  145; 
compact  of,  149;  relations  of, 
with  the  Indians,  161,  167  ;  tol- 
eration in,  189;  merged  im 
Massachusetts,  205. 
I  Pocahontas,    135. 

Point  Comfort  first  named,  139. 

Polk,  James  K.,  his  election  as 
President,   465;   and  the  war 
with    Mexico,    468,    469;   and 
the     Oregon     boundary     dis 
pute,   470. 

Polo,   Marco,   52. 

121 


Petersburg   carried   by    assault,  i  Pont'-Grav6,   M.   de 
T1  532-  Pontiac,  conspiracy  of,   183 

Peyster    Mr.   De,  358.  ;  Poole,  W.  F.,  200,  202. 

Philadelphia,   the   seat   of  gov-!  Poor,  General  Enoch,  242. 

626 


I  N  D  E  X 


Popham  colony,  the,   134.    r47- 
Popham,  George,    134. 
Popham,  Sir  John,  134- 
Population,     of    colonies,     218; 
of   New   York  in    1787,    296; 
Madison's    prediction    of,    in 
the    United    States,    308;    of 
cities  in    181 7,    369'-   increase 
of,  in  the  United  States,  386; 
advance  of,   394,  395".  of  the 
United  States  in  1830,  43 2- 

Populist  party,  601,  602. 

Port  Bill,  Boston,  221. 

Port  Royal,  N.  S.,  taken,  177. 

Port  Royal  Harbor  (S.  C.)  first 
described,   109. 

"Portia."  (See  Adams,  Abigail.) 

Portugal  and  Spain,  possessions  | 
of,  in  the  New  World,  73,  104. 

Pott,  Dr.,   195- 

Potter,   Elisha,  405. 

Powhatan,   132,   135. 

Preble,  Judge,'  420. 

Prescott,  General,   248. 

Prescott,  W.   H.,  4,  4^3  • 

Prideaux,  General  John,   183. 

Princeton,  defeat  of  Cornwall! s 
at,   272 

Pring,  Martin,    133. 

Printz,  John,    158. 

Protestant  colonies,  French,  109, 
no,   in,    112. 

Provincial  life  introduced,   213, 

214- 

Ptolemy,  63. 

Public  men  usually  criticised 
with  justice,   422 

Pueblos,  3,  5,  6,  8,  9.  12,  16,  19. 

Puerto  Rico,   605. 

Pulaski,  Count,   274. 

Puritans,  numbers  of,  155 ;  sacri- 
fices of,  184;  ballads  concern- 
ing, 185;  out-door  life  of,  186; 
social  and  educational  charac- 
ter of,  186;  amusements  of, 
188;  injustice  done  to,  190; 
proportion  of  educated  men 
among,  195. 

Putnam,  F.  W.,   5,    15. 

Putnam,  General  Israel,  241, 
249,  271. 

Putnam,  General  Rufus,  203. 

6 


I  Quakers,  the,  in  Rhode  Island, 
192;  in  Maryland  and  Vir- 
ginia, 195;  in  Massachusetts, 
197;  objections  to,  197;  de- 
fences of,  198;  excesses  of, 
ibid. 

Quebec,  unsuccessful'  siege  of, 
177;  fall  of,   183. 

"  Queen  Anne's  War,"   178. 

Quincy,  Josiah  (member  of 
Congress),  299,  343*  346,  380. 

Quincy,  Josiah  (junior),  rec- 
ollections of,  403,  425;  also. 
404. 

Quincy,  Mrs.  Josiah  (senior), 
224,  277,  279,  332,  34S>  354- 
381. 


Rafn,    Professor.    26,   41.    4-,> 

44,  45,  46,  48. 
Ralegh,  Sir  Walter.  95,  99.   101. 

102,   129,   130,   133,    134.    f35- 

i52»    x59- 
Raleigh,  Va.,    130. 
Ramusio,    105. 
Randolph,  Edmund,   318. 
Randolph,    Edward,     176,    2x1, 

215. 
Randolph,   John,    character   of, 

377;   quoted,   433;   also,    299, 

323.    373-   376- 

Randolph,  Miss,   377. 

Rask,   Professor,  45. 

Rasle,   Pere,   165,    179. 

RatclifTe,  John,  138,   140. 

Reconstruction  acts,  551,  553, 
554,  555.  556,  557,  56i. 

Reconstruction  of  Confederate- 
States,  542,  543,  544,  545- 
546,    547-     ,  T 

Reed,  General  Joseph,  252,  261. 
272. 

Reed,  Thomas  B . ,  Speaker  of  the 
House,  594;  his  struggle  for 
leadership,  601. 

Republican  government,  dis- 
trust of,  280,  336. 

Republican  party.  (See  Demo- 
cratic party.) 

Revere,   Paul.   235. 
■  Revolutionary  War,  battles  in: 

1  at    Lexington,    235;    of    Con- 

2  7 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 


cord,  ibid.;  taking  of  Ticon- 
deroga,  240;  of  Bunker  Hill, 
245;  at  Quebec,  251;  defence 
of  Fort  Moultrie,  252 ;  at  Long 
Island,  271;  at  Fort  Washing- 
ton, 272;  at  Trenton,  ibid.; 
at  Princeton,  ibid.;  at  Brandy- 
wine,  274;  at  Germantown, 
ibid.;  at  Bennington,  ibid.; 
at  Saratoga,  ibid.;  at  York- 
town,  278;  campaigns  of 
General  Greene,  279;  statis- 
tics of,  234,  272,  280,  281. 

Rhode  Island,  purchase  of,  162; 
toleration  in,  191;  educa- 
tion in,  194;  French  army  in, 
277. 

Ribaut,  Jean,  his  landing,  109; 
also,  no,  in,  132,  204. 

Richmond,  Duke  of,  276. 

Richmond,  the  Confederate  capi- 
tal, 515;  abandoned  by  the 
Confederates,  532. 

Riedesel,  Baroness,  228. 

Riedesel,   General,   229. 

Right   of   search,    British,    339, 

Riots,  slave,  448,  449;  draft, 
53o;  negro,    553. 

Roads  and  canals,  opening  of, 
389,  397.  400,  401. 

Robinson,  John,  146,  149. 

Robinson ,   Rowland ,   227. 

Rochambeau,  Comte  de.  278, 
309- 

Rochester,  N.  Y.,  394. 

Rodney,  Cassar,  261,  265. 

Rogers,  Samuel,  59. 

Rolfe,  John,  142. 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  his  elec- 
tion as  Vice-president,  609; 
succeeds  to  Presidency,  610. 

Rosecrans,  W.  S.,  527. 

Ross,  General,  357,  358. 

Roxbury,  Mass.,  settled,    153. 

Rule,  Margaret,  203. 

Rupert,  Prince,  245. 

Rush,  Richard,  391,  420. 

Russell,  Mrs.  Jonathan,  377. 

Russia,  Alaska  purchased  from, 
563- 

Rutledge,  Edward,  256,  261. 

62 


Sac  Indians,  ii. 
Sackville,   Lord,   591. 
Sagadahoc  .  River    (Kennebec) , 

o   I34- 
Saguenay,    107. 

St.  Asaph's,  Bishop  of,  270. 

St.  Augustine,  Fla.,  in. 

"  St.  Castin's  War,"  175. 

St.  Clair,  General,  313. 

St.  John,  Henry  (Viscount  Bol- 

ingbroke),  178. 
St.  John's  River  explored,  109. 
St.  Lawrence  River  explored  by 

Cartier,  104,  107. 
St.  Louis,  Mo.,  369. 
St.  Simon's  Island,  Ga.,  1. 
Salem,     Mass.,     settlement     of, 

152;   witchcraft   at,    201;   old 

usages  of,  206. 
Sallust,    186. 
Sampson,  Admiral,  at  Santiago, 

605. 
San  Antonio,  battle  of,  472. 
San  Domingo,  568. 
San  Francisco,  Cal.,  93. 
San  Jacinto,  battle  of,  459. 
Sanchez,  Roderigo,  58. 
Sanctuary,. land  of  the,  157. 
Santander,  Dr.  Pedro,  114. 
Santiago,  capture  of,  605. 
Saratoga,  N.  Y.,  victory  at,  274; 

surrender    of    Burgoyne    at, 

ibid. 
Sardinian  impressions  of  Colum- 
bus, 50. 
Sargasso  Sea,  the,  55. 
Sassafras,  trade  in,  133. 
Savannah,  General  Sherman  at, 

529- 
Savonarola,  Girolamo,   191. 
Scalps  taken  by  English,  165. 
Schenectady,    Indian    massacre 

at,  177 ;  also,  392. 
Schley,  Rear-admiral,  608. 
Schofield,  General  J.  M.,  559. 
Schoner,  Johann,  globe  of,  65. 
Schuyler,  General  Philip,   249. 
Schuyler    mansion    at    Albany, 

228. 
Scientific  surveys,   398. 
Scott,   Dred,   case  of,   502,  503, 

504.  505. 

8 


INDEX 


Scott,    General    Winfield,    429, 

464,  471'  491- 
Sea  of  Darkness,  the,  53. 
Seamen,  old  English,  73. 
Secession,  talk  of ,  505;  Southern 

States  pass  ordinance  of,  509, 

Second  generation  in  America, 

the,   184. 
Sedgwick,  Catharine,  335. 
Sedgwick,  Mrs.  Theodore,  309. 
Selectmen,  origin  of,  230. 
Seminole  war,  432. 
Seven  Bishops,  the,  9. 
Seven  Cities,  the,  9,  10 1. 
Sewall,    Samuel,    his    share    in 

the  witchcraft  trials,  201. 
Seward,  William   H.,   447,  481, 

532,  545,  560,   563. 
Seymour,     Horatio,     candidate 

for  President,   562. 
Shakespeare,    William,    quoted, 

86,  102,  252. 
Shays,  Daniel,  289,  317. 
Shepard,  Rev.  Thomas,  187. 
Sheridan,    General    Philip    H., 

in    Shenandoah    Valley,    528, 

529. 
Sherman,  General  W.  T.,   521, 

527,   528,   529,   532,   548. 
Sherman,    John,     Secretary    of 

the  Treasury,   581. 
Sherman,  Roger,  256,  263. 
Sherman  act,  593,  596,  600. 
Sherwood,  Grace,  201. 
Shirley,  Governor,  180,  248. 
Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  99. 
Silver,  free  coinage  of,  597,  601. 
Simpson,  Lieutenant  J.  H.,  2,  5, 

43- 

Skelton,  Rev.  John,  152,  187. 

Skraelings,  the,  38,  39;  not 
Indians,  46. 

Slafter,  E.  F.,  121,   124. 

Slave  riots,  448,  449. 

Slavery  first  introduced  at  St. 
Augustine,  in;  in  Virginia, 
136,  230;  influence  of,  in 
Northern  colonies,  226,  230; 
in  southern  colonies,  229; 
discussion  of,  334,  372,  433, 
434,  435,  436,  438>  439.  44o, 

6 


442,   444,   445,   44«.   45xi  455- 
458,  474,   492,   494,   495,  497. 

499.  5IQ.  523.  524- 

Slaves,  in  Virginia,  435;  in 
Carolina,  ibid.;  number  of,  in 
1 7 15,  436;  treatment  of,  437; 
fugitive,  486,  487,  488,  490, 
523. 

Slave-trade,  the,  84,  86,  87; 
prohibited,  341;  opposition 
to,  435;  tolerated,  440;  sup- 
pression of,  464,  479;  African, 

5°5- 
Slidell,  John,   517,    518. 
Sloat,  Commodore,  471. 
Smith,   Buckingham,   71. 
Smith,    Chief-justice    and    Mrs., 

279- 

Smith,  Captain  John,  his  ro- 
mantic spirit,  135;  his  de- 
scriptions, ibid.;  his  map,  136, 
137,  141;  quoted,  131,  139, 
143,  163;  cited,  132,  135,  137- 
146,  156,  162. 

Smith,   Colonel,   235,   237. 

Smith,   Gerrit,   487. 

Smith,  Samuel  H.,  330. 

Smith,  Sydney,  380,  430. 

Snorri,   40. 

Snorri   Sturleson,    28. 

Society,  American,  manners  in, 
296,  297,  301,  302,  332,  333, 
344-346,  375-377.  403,  404, 
426,  427. 

Soto,  F.  de,  70,  114,  174. 

South  Carolina,  separated  from 
North  Carolina,  204;  old  in- 
stitutions of,  207;  State  con- 
stitution of,  281;  nullification 
in,  429;  passes  ordinance  of 
secession,   509. 

Southcote,  Joanna,    191. 

Spain,  exaggerations  of  chroni- 
clers of,  10;  bigotry  of,  114, 
115;  "  Requisitions "  of,  114; 
cruelty  of,  120;  its  policy  in 
Cuba,  603;  declaration  of  war 
with,  605. 
Spain  and  Portugal,  possessions 
of,  in  the  New  World,  73, 
104. 
Spanish  Armada,    100. 

20 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Sparke,  John,   85. 
Sparks,  Jared,  483. 
Spring  Creek,  Term.,    15. 
Squaw  sachem,  the,  168. 
Squier,  E.   G.,    23. 
Stackelburg,  Baron,   404. 
Stadacone   (Quebec),    109. 
Stamp  Act,  the,   221. 
Standish,   Miles,    150,    151,    164, 

187,    189. 
Stanton.    Edwin    M.,    Secretary 

of  War,  521,  555,  557,  558. 
Stark,  General  John,  274. 
"  Starving  time,  the,"    142. 
State  -  rights     doctrines.      304, 

361,   389- 
States,  union  of,   283. 
Steamboats,      introduction      of, 

400. 
Stephanius,   Sigurd,  47. 
Stephens,    Alexander    H.,    478; 

chosen  vice-president  of  Con- 
federate States,  510. 
Stephens,  J.  L.,  4,  12. 
Steuben,  Baron,  274. 
Stevens,  Thaddeus,  548. 
Stevenson,  Adlai  E.,  candidate 

for  Vice-president,  609. 
Stevenson,  Mary,  232. 
Stiles,   Rev.  Ezra,  quoted,   222, 

292. 
Stockton,  Chief- justice,   257. 
Stockton,  Commodore.  471. 
Storrs,  W.  L.,  405. 
Story,  Judge  Joseph,  353,  414. 
vStory,  Thomas,  defends  Quaker 

nakedness,    198. 
Stoughton,   Lieutenant  -  govern- 

or<   r55- 
Stowe's,      Mrs..      Uncle      Tom's 

Cabin,  489. 
vStrachey.  William,    r  32. 
Stuyvesant,  Peter,  203,  204. 
Succession,  War  of  the  Spanish 

178. 
Suffrage,   negro,    561.    562,    564. 
s  567 

Sulhvan,  General,  251. 
Sullivan,    WiHiam,    cited,    299, 

33o.    333~>    quoted,    302,    344^ 
0  352,  359.  422. 
Sumner,  Charles.   SS2,  499    548 


I  Sumner,    Professor   W.    G.,  228, 
418,  421,  432. 
Sumter,  Fort,  510,  514. 
Swedish    colony    in     Delaware, 

157,   162,  203. 
Sweinke,  his  defiance,  34. 
Swift,  General  Joseph  G.,  367. 

Tadoussac,  early  fur-trade   at, 

ii3- 
Talleyrand- Perigord,  Prince  de, 

310,   326,   327. 
Taney,   Chief-justice   Roger  B., 

™  42i'   5,°2'   5°3- 

farm,  the,  334,  361,  371. 

Taylor,     General     Zachary,     in 
command  of  forces  in  Texas. 
468,     471;     his     election     as 
President,  475. 
Taylor,  Jeremy,   208. 
Tecumseh,   356. 
Teller,   Senator,   602. 
Temple,  Sir  John,  301. 
Tennessee,  mounds  of,    15;   ad- 
mitted as  a  State,  337;  emi- 
grants to,  395;   secedes   from 
Union ,     516;      reconstructed , 
543- 
Tennyson,  Alfred,  quoted,  122. 
Tenure  of  Office  act,  554,  555, 

558,   568. 
Terence,  186,  188. 
Territorial  slavery,  455. 
Territory,  national,  increase  of. 
^  337,   365,   366. 
Texas,  proposed  annexation  of, 
458;    attempts    to    purchase, 
459;     declared     independent, 
ibid.;  annexation  of,  defeated, 
460;     Tyler     favors     annexa- 
tion  of,    464;    admitted   as   a 
State,     466,     467;     boundary 
disputes,     468,     478;     passes 
ordinance    of   secession,    510, 
Thacher,  Oxenbridge,  220,  248. 
Thacher,    Rev.    Peter,    bowling- 
alley  of,    188. 
Thayer,  Eli,   496. 
Thirkill,   Launcelot,   81. 
Thirteenth     Amendment,      the. 

545,   548- 
Thomas,  General,   24 r.   528. 


630 


INDEX 


Underhill,  Captain  John,  168. 

Union  Pacific  Railway  com- 
pleted,  580. 

United  States,  first  organized  as 
a  confederation,  284;  becomes 
a  nation,  291;  western  lands 
of,  293;  inauguration  of  gov- 
ernment of,  294;  social  condi- 
tion of,  296;  division  of 
parties  in,  304,  316,  328; 
appointment  of  officials  in, 
306;  adopts  Washington  as 
the  seat  of  government,  308; 
early  political  violence  in, 
314-  319-  335.  349;  negotia- 
tions with  France,  315,  318, 
326;  its  treaty  with  England, 
317;  influence  of  French  Rev- 
olution on,  320;  great  ex- 
tension of  territory  of,  337; 
its  war  with  England  (18 12), 
347 ;  era  of  good  feeling  in, 
363;  great  western  march  of 
population  of,  386;  early 
maps  of,  392;  centre  of 
population  of,  396;  wars  with 
Indian  tribes  of,  432;  rise  of 
antislavery  agitation  in,  ibid. 

Upham,  C.  W.,  186. 

Usselinx,  William,  157. 

Utah  organized  as  a  Territory, 

479- 
Utica,   N.   Y.,   392. 
Uxmal,    12,    19. 

Valentine,   Dr.,   17. 

Valley  Forge,  Revolutionary 
army  at,  274. 

Van  Buren,  Martin,  378;  his 
nomination  as  Minister  to 
Great  Britain,  455;  his  elec- 
tion as  President,  456;  his 
administration,  457-460;  his 
second  nomination  to  the 
Presidency,  461,  474;  op- 
posed to  annexation  of  Texas, 

465- 
Van  Rensselaer,  Catherine,  404. 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  publication  j  Varangian  guard,  the,  27. 
of,  489.  !  Varnhagen,  F.  A.  de,  62. 

Underground    railroad,"    487,  I  Vassall  family,  226,  228. 
488.  I  Vaughan,   Mr.,   427. 

631 


Thomas,    Lorenzo,   558. 

Thompson,  John,   264. 

Thomson,  Charles,   266. 

Thornton.  Colonel  Matthew, 
266. 

Thorwald,  37,  48. 

Thorwaldsen,   A.   B..   40. 

Thoughts  on  African  Coloniza- 
tion,  Garrison's,   447. 

Thury.   Pere,   177. 

Ticknor,  George,  258,  483. 

Ticonderoga,  capture  of,   183. 

Tilden.  Samuel  J.,  nominated 
for  President,   574. 

Titles  of  the  President,  302. 

Tobacco,    143. 

Tompkins.  Daniel  D.,  374. 

Toombs.  Robert,  478. 

44,  47- 
Toryi-  '  Cambridge,  Mass., 

Town  ;.-•  nent,  origin  of,  230. 

1  racy,  Senator,  309. 

Trades,  introduction  of,    187. 

Treat,   Robert,   214, 

Treaty,  of  Ryswick,  178;  of 
Utrecht,  179;  of  Paris,  279, 
605;  Jay's,  317;  with  Tripoli, 
341 :  of  Ghent,  359. 

Trenton,  surprise  of  Hessians  at, 
272. 

Triana,   Rodrigo  de,   59. 

Tripoli,  treaty  with,   341. 

Trist,  N.   P.,  430. 

Truxton,  Commodore,  327. 

Tudor,  William,   246. 

Tunnachemootoolt,  village  of, 
i  1 . 

'Turner,  J.  M.  W.,  59. 

'Turner,  Nat,  insurrection,  448.    ] 

Tyler,  John,  candidate  for  Vice-  , 
president,    461;    succeeds    to  J 
Presidency,   462;   his  cabinet 
resigns,   463;   favors   annexa- ! 
tion  of  Texas,  464. 

Tylor,   E.   B.,    13,    17. 

Tyrker,   37. 


HISTORY    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES 


Venezuela     boundary     dispute, 

599,   600. 
Vera  Cruz,  471. 
Vergennes,  M.  de,  275,  285. 
Vermont  admitted  as  a  State, 

336. 

Verrazzano,  74,  83,  104,  105. 
Vespucci,   Amerigo,   new    views 
concerning,   62;  also,   66,   68, 

,  .74-  78. 

Vicksburg,   521,   527. 

Vikings,  visit  of  the,  25. 

Villegagnon,  M.  de,  109. 

Vinci,  Leonardo  da,  63. 

Vinland,  35,  40,  45,  47;  not 
identified,    48. 

Virgil,    188. 

Virginia,  settlement  of,  130; 
starvation  in,  142;  young 
women  emigrants  to,  142; 
Indian  massacres  in,  167, 
170,  182;  education  in,  194; 
intolerance  in,  195;  witch- 
craft in,  201;  its  House  of 
Burgesses,  229;  resolutions  of 
1798,  328;  also,  435,  545,  547, 
516. 

Volney,  C.  F.  C,  Count  de, 
3". 

Voltaire,  F.   M.  A.  de,  216. 

Von  Hoist,  Dr.,  411,  417. 

Voyageurs,  the  French,  104, 
119,    127. 

Wade-Davis  bill,  543,  544. 

Wadsworth,   William,   212. 

Waldseemiiller,  Martin,  63. 

Walker,  Sir  Hovenden,   179. 

Wamsutta,    168. 

War  of  181 2,  opposition  to, 
352-355;  battles  during,  356. 

War,  the  Hundred  Years',  160; 
of  the  Spanish  Succession, 
178;  of  the  Austrian  Succes- 
sion, 180;  the  Revolutionary 
(see  Revolutionary  War);  of 
1812  (see  War  of  1812);  the 
Seminole,  432. 

Warbeck,   Perkin,  81. 

Ward,  General  A.,   242. 

Wardwell,   Lydia,   198. 

Warner,  Seth,   241. 

63 


Warren,    Dr.   Joseph,    237-230. 

244,   248. 
Warren,  General  James,  335. 
Warren,  Mrs.  Mercy,  her   spicy 
correspondence      with       fohn 
Adams,  335,  336. 
Warville,   Brissot  de,  309. 
Washington,    George,    his   early 
Western  expedition,   181;  his 
report  on  Indian  outrages,  182  ; 
takes  command  of  Continen- 
tal army,  246;  his  opinion  of 
the  army,  ibid.;  his  views  of 
discipline,  249;  forces  evacua- 
tion   of    Boston,     250;     rec- 
ognizes     need      of     indepen- 
dence, 254;  his  promulgation 
of    the     Declaration    of    In- 
dependence, 270;  his  victories, 
272;   his   anxieties,  ibid.;  de- 
spondent   at    last,     276;    his 
dancing     at     Newport,     278; 
orders  cessation  of  hostilities, 
279;  his  distrust  of  the  Con 
federation,  284,  288;  his  break- 
fast with  Jefferson,    286;   his 
release  of  prisoners  from  jail, 
290 ;  letter  of  Knox  to,  quoted, 
ibid.;     his     inauguration     as 
President,    294;   his   adminis- 
tration,   296;    his    receptions, 
301;  his  cabinet,  304;  his  re- 
election,  312;   abuse  of  him. 
318,  319;  letter  of  Jefferson  to, 
342;    his    Farewell    Address, 
351;  proposes  canals,  401. 
Washington,   Mrs.   George,   298. 

301.   312. 
Washington    City,    adopted    as 
the  seat  of  government,  308; 
British   capture   of,    357;    so- 
ciety in,   301,   302,   333,   344, 
345.  346,  374,  376,  377,  403. 
404,  427;  inhabitants  of,  378, 
404. 
Watertown,  Mass.,  settled,  153 
Wayne,  Anthony,  313. 
Weaver,    James    B.,    candidate 

for  the  Presidency,  596. 
Webb,  Dr.  T.  A.,  41,  42. 
Webster,    Daniel,    quoted,    263, 
414,  424;  also,  258,  263,  354, 


INDEX 


378,   382,  403.  4o8,  419'   42i, 
456,  463,  480,  483,  484- 
Webster,   Ezekiel,  419. 
Webster,  Mrs.  Daniel,  4°3- 
Weetamo,    168. 
Welch,  Dr.,   237. 
Welde,  Rev.  Thomas,   186. 
Wellington,  Duke  of,  377. 
Wentworth     house     in      Ports- 
mouth, N.  H.,  228. 
West,  Captain,  162. 
West     Virginia     admitted    into 

the  Union,   525. 
Western  States,  early  condition 
of,     387,     392;      change     in, 
392. 
Wheatley.   Phillis,   311. 
Wheeler,  William  A.,  candidate 
for  Vice-president,   574,   575*. 
declared  elected,  576. 
Wheeling,  Va.,  394. 
Whiskey  Insurrection,   316. 
White,  Father,   156. 
White,     Hugh     L.,     candidate 

for  President,  456- 
White,  John,    130,    131. 
White,  Mrs.  Florida,  404. 
White  House,  early  life  in,  325, 

333,  345.  405,  406. 
White  Man's  Land,  40- 
Whitney,    Eli,    inventor   of   the 

cotton-gin,   439. 
Whitnev,  Professor  J.   D.,   24. 
Whittie'r,  J.  G.,  198,  380,  381- 
Wilkes,  Captain,  518. 
Wilkinson,  Jemima.   191. 
William,  King,  176,  214. 
Williams,  Rev.  John,   178. 
Williams,      Roger,     banishment 
of,    154;    purchase    of   Rhode 
Island  by,  162;  toleration  of, 
190;  quoted,    191;  also,    187, 
i95- 


Wilmot,   David,  473- 

"Wilmot     Proviso,"     the,     47.v 

474,   480. 
Wilson,    Deborah,    198. 
Wilson,  James,   256. 
Wilson's  Creek,   517. 
Wingate,  Paine,  225. 
Wingfield,  E.  M.,  138. 
Winslow,    Josiah,    quoted,    167; 

also,   162,   168,  187. 
Winsor,  J.,  Narrative  and  Crit- 
ical     History      of     America, 
quoted,  144. 
Winthrop,    Governor    John    (of 

Connecticut)  ,177- 
Winthrop,    Governor    John    (of 
Massachusetts) , arrival  of ,  1 53 ; 
journal  of,  cited,  201;  also,  185, 
187,  189. 
Winthrop,   Hannah,  235. 
Wirt,  Mrs.  William,  403. 
Wirt,  William,  430. 
Witchcraft     in      Europe,     199; 
in  Connecticut,  201 ;  in  Mary- 
land,    Virginia,     New    York, 
Massachusetts,  201. 
Witherspoon,  Dr.,  257. 
Wolcott,   Mrs.  Oliver,   309. 
Wolcott,  Oliver.  301,  315. 
Wolfe,  General  James,   183. 
Wood's  Holl,  45- 
Wright,  Colonel  C.  D.,   187. 
Wyatt,  Rev.  Hant,  195. 
Wythe,   George,   220. 

X,  Y,  Z    CORRESPONDENCE,   326. 

Yeomen   of   New   England   de- 
scribed,  229. 
Yucatan,  2,  5,  17,  20. 

Zuazo,    10. 

Zubly,  Rev.  J.  J.,  280. 


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•WTO  U3 

U  1558 
- 1 1980 


JUN 1  3  1967  1 S 


LIBRARY  US£  ONLY 


^a7^'81^'251989 

[    ■■'SB    taJfcut-ATIQN  DEPT. 


RECEIVED 

«AY  2  6  1989 

RECSJYEDC,I''CULAT,0N  °£PT 


*1 


FE86    70 .4PM 

LD  21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476"^AN    Djgjpi* 


NOV 


3CI         c*9d 


'3 


% 


YC  50034 


TH£  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


